Social Media Marketing Tips For Small Business Owners: Which Sites Are Right For Your Business

As the owner of an SEO writing company, one of the services clients ask me about is social media marketing (SMM). Many clients now “get” social media as they know it should be a part of their online marketing strategy, but they may not know which sites are best suited for their needs. So what usually happens is that they will hire a social media consultant to set up accounts on all of them. By the way, this is usually not the best strategy.

Here are three tips I offer my company’s small business clients about this form of online marketing.

If you’re self-employed and provide social media account management services, trust me, you’ll go a long way to show you know what you’re doing if you mentor clients who may not be clear on how to properly “do” this type of marketing. In Internet. .

A Dirty Little Secret Many Don’t Know About Social Media Marketing

The first piece of advice is that you don’t need to interact on all the major social networking sites. Yes, you read it right. A few years ago, when there were only three major SM sites, my SEO writing company wrote a report for an internet marketing company that talked about this in depth.

Right now, when most people talk about SMM, they mean five main sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Google+. These last two have become popular in recent years.

With five major social networks in play, this type of web marketing may seem like a waste of time. But, it doesn’t have to be. this brings me To my second piece of advice, which is… take the time to figure out which social networks are right for your business. How do you do this? Delving into the demography and sociography of each site.

Let’s use Twitter as an example; The following are some demographics of this popular social networking site.

• More than a quarter of African Americans who are online (28%) use Twitter; 13% use it on a typical day, which is almost double the overall average.
• 26% of internet users aged 18-29 use Twitter, which is almost double the rate for those aged 30-49.
• Residents of urban areas are significantly more likely to use Twitter than their rural counterparts. [Source: The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, Winter 2012]

If you have a business that appeals to urban youth (eg clothing, music, shoes), then Twitter would be a good place to spend time. But, if you’ve sold financial products aimed at a middle-aged or retired demographic, Twitter probably shouldn’t be your social medium of choice (LinkedIn might be a better option).

My last piece of advice about this type of online marketing is to test, tweak, and evaluate to see what works best for your business. This is true of any form of marketing, online or offline.

So choose your site based on your demographics, put together a social media marketing campaign, and start engaging. Then measure those results.

Conclusion

One last thing: it’s nice to have a presence in all of SM’s major outlets, but spend most of your time on those that give you measurable results.

If you are a freelancer who offers social media account management to customers, write a special report explaining these tips to customers. It not only shows that you know what you’re doing, but that you have their best online marketing interests in mind.