As a business using social media marketing, you need to know what is the most important thing that you can do to attract customers to your business. You may be surprised to learn that the most important thing in online marketing is building trust.
Customers want a brand that they can trust and count on. They want a company that they can refer their friends to or that they can keep returning back to when they need similar services again. At the end of the day, the ROI (Return on investment) is not the biggest value that you are going to get from social media marketing. Through social media, you are going to be able to build up a trusting relationship with your customers, that helps them identify from you, and to learn from your insights. This will make you “front of mind” and become their first call when they need something.
The first step to gain this trust is to communicate with your customers and potential customers in your personal brand voice that is consistent always. This is most effective through writing social media posts in a manner that is human rather than through messages that seems very robotic in nature. You want to show off a relatable personality that will get customers to trust in you and your Company. Once you find the specific tone of your brand voice, you need to stick to it. Being consistent is key to gaining the trust of your readers and customers.
When it comes to actual posts, there are a few things that you need to do. You should post ideas that are unique and original for a few reasons. One, fresh posts help in ranking articles and two, when people see a different approach to a common topic, it can gain traction. These posts can be informative pieces or ones that are entertaining or a mixture of the two. You want to make sure these posts shareable so that your followers will want to share it with their friends, by having social media sharing buttons on each article or post you do. By doing this, you will gain more followers, which will increase the recognition of your brand.
A final aspect to using social media to gain the trust of your customers is through engaging with them. If a customer contacts you through social media about an issue with your products or services, be accountable and apologetic while trying to remedy the situation.
These are things that will help increase your customer’s trust in your brand. If a customer trusts you, they will be more willing to keep coming back for services and refer their friends and loved ones. Do not use your posts to market things all of the time, otherwise people will not want to follow you. You need to find a perfect balance between advertising and offering more value to your customers.
Remember this: Educate, don’t inundate.. Provide value, and people will trust and buy from you naturally.
In this quick Pinterest for Business training video, I walk you through how to setup or Convert your Pinterest account to a Pinterest Business Account.
Pinterest recently created even more buzz to their Platform by launching the Pinterest Business Accounts. At the moment, the difference between the two types of account at the moment has only a few important things (including the Terms and conditions and a great categorization feature – such as Celebrity, Local business, etc.) HOWEVER if you are a business on Pinterest, you should be moving over to the Business Accounts as Pinterest has hinted at adding in more resources (can someone hope to say “Buy IT”) to help businesses succeed on the Pinterest Platform.
Pinterest has finally created Secret Boards! This is a great thing for the Pinterest Platform.
The benefit to businesses is that these Secret boards can only be seen by the people you invite to them so you can collaborate on these boards as a team and keep the details private, such as new client images, or social media strategy articles or even Event ideas for your get-togethers..
My favourite thing for these Secret Boards is that you can create Client Boards for each Client (You get 3 secret boards from Pinterest. So use them wisely!). This way you can then assign the Client to contribute to the board and you can share ideas back and forth visually.
Watch the Pinterest Tip video above for how to set up your own Secret Board.
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Social networking has swept the world, taking along with it best friend and business alike. There is now no better way to communicate effectively with the people around and across the world from you than the use of any of the great social networks. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest have all drawn a heavy flow of interactivity to the internet in ways that have never been seen before.
Not only is communication that much easier, but business techniques and means of selling things have now been forever revolutionized. No longer is a storefront necessary to become a successful small business; almost anyone can do it from behind a computer.
Here, you’ll learn 10 best Pinterest business tips for online marketing.
Plan Properly – Set your log up correctly to allow it to pin the things you want to it properly. Have your follow button prominently displayed on your website to ensure that a high volume of traffic is able to reach your Pinterest blog.
Research – Know and research what your ideal client or customer is pinning, and set up your boards to get things going!
Honor The Source – Know the copyrights of everything you post, and keep an eye out for any infractions. Know the sources of the things you re-pin and make sure things you post have your own watermark. These things can save a lot of headache down the line.
Pin Strategically – Be social when it comes to pinning. Pin across several boards and follow, pin, re-pin, and comment.
Drive up Traffic – Being social and pinning across several board will see a return on that invest back towards your board. Add appropriate web links to pins as well as time your pins out over time. Don’t just dump them all out at one time!
Visual Content – The internet is all about instant gratification and seeing things. Use this to post great visuals to your and other boards.
KISS – Keeping it simple with easy to understand, clear visuals will get you noticed a lot easier.
Create & Curate – Cultivate the culture of your brand by pinning things not just about you own business but about others in the same niche as well. Finding these people are a great way to ‘buddy-up’ and reach and even larger audience.
Content, Content, Content – Creating fresh content is another great key to finding and building report in your customer base.
Learn from the Best – Being a diligent student by learning from other brands and what they have pinned successfully can become very profitable, as well as connect others to you.
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Social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have taken over the world by storm, connecting people in ways that no one ever thought possible. There are many different types of people that use LinkedIn and access its benefits in the best ways possible, and this has quickly become a great tool for those seeking to expand their personal professional networks to others who they may only know from afar.
What is great about the success of these social media outlets, is that anyone can sign up for a profile and start meeting people, even companies. With the new LinkedIn Company Pages, companies now have the ability to make connections to others via the social network that wasn’t available a while back.
Getting a company page is akin to making a page on Facebook; both are meant to outsource a person, brand, or products availability in a way that is convenient and conducive to finding out more information. LinkedIn has created a way to share a company’s information on its site, versus the personal profile layout of the majority of its visitors.
The LinkedIn Company Pages allow companies to express their brand through pictures that they might not have the ability to share otherwise. This is invaluable since the internet is really about instant gratification and pictures can many times speak for themselves (I am looking at you Pinterest!). It also allows companies to showcase what they have to offer, such as being able to quickly give a customer the ability to scan what it is that you offer in a hands-off, non-intrusive way. This quickly builds a customer rapport on a level that regular advertising does not. These pages allow a company to highlight what’s important and keeps their followers up to date.This allows for a connection to the individual in a way that companies in the past could never even dream of!
People all over the world connect to each other every day through social media. Now, with the revised LinkedIn Company Pages, even companies can connect to their customers at the base level like never before through status updates, pictures, highlights, and comments. Companies are now able to interact directly with the people who are buying their product, supporting their brand, and who have questions. Although similar only in idea as a Facebook company page, companies can now interact so closely with their consumers like they can through LinkedIn Company Pages as LinkedIn is more about doing business and connecting, whereas Facebook is about sharing information.
Here is a secret that I want to give to you that I give to my clients that I train about Social Media Marketing techniques. As with a lot of other Companies out there, my clients are working on developing, implementing or adding in social media strategies to leverage social media in order to get results. We put a plan into place and I walk them through step-by-step how to attract more clients and increase profits using Social Media.
The number one thing that I see with a lot of Companies these days is to only rely on Social Media platforms to be their main “website” platform of information. This is a mistake. It really is, for a number of reasons.
I have always cherished the statement “You get what you pay for” and it is relevant in many avenues.
I am a huge believer in Social Media Marketing and what it can do for businesses. Social Media works and it works well. Having been part of the web business for over 17 years now with building sites, I have seen it all.
Here is what I want to tell you:
Facebook (or any other Social Media setup – Pinterest, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ etc) should NEVER be your main website platform.
Here is why….
1. You are ALWAYS playing in some one else’s sandbox: If Facebook wants to change your layout of your site when they want, they do and you end up with Timelines (I am a fan by the way). LinkedIn is now updating their Company pages and this will again upset people who have spent time and effort crafting the perfect look and feel to their site. With your own main website, you are in Control. No “social media handcuffs”.
2. The Social Media Platform owns the content that you upload: When you upload content to ANY of these sites, make sure you read their Terms. On Facebook, they own all the content so you really are just “leasing” a space from them and then can remove it at any time. That isn’t the best business model, right?
3. Everything goes in phases: Remember MySpace? It was Facebook 5 years ago and now it’s almost embarassing to be on there. Social platforms go in and out and granted, Facebook is very strong, but just like the Roman Empire, it will not last forever.
4. Google and other Search engines will not benefit your Social Platforms as they will your Website:Granted, search engines will still index your information IF the social platform allows it, however you will generally only have 1 page that is indexed versus many from the website you run.
5. A Place to call Home Base: By having your own website (a full website hosted on a paid service – not a free service), you can control all of your content and all of your information. Make this the place to lead ALL of your social platforms to. This is where you want clients and customers to come to. Facebook is great for interactions as is Pinterest and Twitter, but in the end, if you want true ongoing sales, you have to bring them back to your website. Always.
I want to ensure that your online business continues to do well with Social Media. If you already have your Facebook page, and all other items but do not have a site yet, please consider setting it up as the main place for people to land.
One last note: This doesn’t mean in any way that you stop using Social Media. I recommend to use it all the time, profitably however when you use Social Media combined with a solid website strategy, you will yield the best results.
Enjoyed this post? If so, please share on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to let your friends know about it. Your help spreading the word would be really appreciated.
