Social media is much more than sending a few tweets and posting on Facebook. Every year, the social media field continues to develop, giving small business owners and corporations the opportunity to interact with their customers. As a business owner, you should be reviewing these trends and determining which ones would benefit your business the most. These are the most popular social media trends for 2013. Consider adding one or more of these tools to your marketing arsenal.
Teleseminar and Webinar Promotion
Teleseminars and webinars are cost-effective alternatives to workshops and conferences. When you hold a workshop or a conference, you must book event space, set up and tear down the seating, spend money producing event programs and name badges for guests, and pay someone to manage the registration process for attendees. When you hold a teleseminar or webinar, you do not have to worry about any of these expenses. A teleseminar is an event that you deliver over the telephone, while a webinar is delivered via an attendee’s Internet connection. Social media is a great way to promote these events, as you can communicate their value in tweets, Facebook posts, and Pinterest pins. You can also encourage those who are already registered to share the details with anyone who might benefit from the information you plan to deliver.
Additional Content Opportunities
Social media also makes it possible to deliver the same information you use in your teleseminars and webinars without having to spend time creating new content. If your teleseminar involves a 10-step checklist, you can easily break these 10 steps into different tweets or Facebook posts. If you shared an interesting infographics with people who attended your webinar, you can pin the infographics to Pinterest and drive traffic to your website.
Visual Content
Content is much more than words on a page. The term content can also refer to audio and video, so you should be incorporating this type of content into your social media campaign. Consider creating educational videos and uploading them to YouTube. Once you upload them, promote them via Twitter and other social media tools. Take photos of your products or ask your clients to submit photos of them using your products or services. Post these photos where people in your target market will see them.
Social Media Affiliate Promotion
The biggest benefit of using an affiliate program is that you create an enthusiastic sales force that only gets paid when you make sales. Social media is a great way for your affiliates to promote your products and services, as people often listen to recommendations they receive from their social media contacts. When you start your affiliate program, create several tweets or Facebook posts and make them available to program members. Members can post these snippets with their unique affiliate links, which will drive traffic to your site and help them make money any time you make a sale.
User Engagement
It’s not enough to post messages on your social media accounts. You must also engage customers and people in your target market. Engaging people means commenting on their activities, initiating discussions on tools like Google+ and Facebook, sharing links to other resources, answering questions posted by customers, conducting customer surveys, and asking for feedback. If you ask for feedback on your products and services, you must thank people for their feedback and show them that you are using it to improve your business. You can even offer gifts or incentives for users who give you feedback that helps you improve your products or make more sales.
Social media is one trend that is not going to go away any time soon. If you are not sure how to use it to your advantage, consult a social media consultant. An experienced consultant can help you use this marketing technique to your advantage.
