Social Media

Social media is all about using the online communications that brings people together to broadcast your business's messages while developing the relationships crucial to building your business.

Let's explore what social media is, and a few key principles that will help to make your social media marketing perform better without having to spend more.

What is Social Media?

Social media is best explained after you understand what social networking is and how it works. Keep the following explanation in mind before trying to understand the principles outlined on this page.

Social networking takes place on websites where people can develop personal connections between on another. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn are examples of websites where this happens, though it's important to note that both the type of communication expected on these networks and the people on them are distinctly different.

Social media involves using networked connections to form relationships with people whom use social networking. The most well-known example of this involves businesses like your own utilizing Facebook to gather a growing audience.

Core Principles of Social Media

Using social media is about more than just selling your products. It can be used to empower your business and to build long-lasting relationships that will continue to drive your business years and years after you've initiated your efforts on social networks.

1. Don't Push Your Products

The first and foremost mistakes that most businesses make is that they try to sell their products to their fans.

Don't do this. You'll end up losing fans and creating people whom resent your brand.

Instead, ...

2. Have Your Customers Promote Your Products and Services

Teaching your fans to promote your products will benefit you more than you could ever do so by yourself. One of our favorite examples of this routinely happens on Home Depot's fan page, which regularly posts things like:

Notice that Home Depot just touches upon their sale. The main purpose of their post is to make their fans reflect on why they would want the product posted.

3. Listen to Your Customers

Listening to your customers should be a main-stay of your social media focus. You'll learn about the various motives that drive your customers, which allows you to make your business far more effective than it would be without those key insights.

4. Converse

People prefer to buy from other people, which is why businesses that act just as entities tend to have the hardest time selling their goods. Acting like a person or giving your business person-like attributes will help to make your marketing more effective with your audiences.

5. Build Relationships

The last core principle concerning social media marketing is that you need to work on building relationships above all else. These are more valuable than simple profits, as relationships will continue to benefit you for a long time after you establish them with your customers.

They'll provide publicity, positive attention, more sales and a plethora of beneficial things that you would likely unable be able to acquire any other way.