Pugliese on PR
Benefits of small business social media marketing
By Tina L. Pugliese, APR, Pugliese Public Relations
Depending on your product or service, many businesses can use social networking sites to help grow brand equity. Some companies’ brands are their most valuable asset. If your marketing and sales efforts rely heavily on brand recognition, then social networking gives you the perfect opportunity for creating that brand recognition.
Twitter and Facebook are particularly useful in this area. You can participate in the Twitter community, entice your customers to follow you, catch a more unique, personal glimpse into your business and therefore establish a very close connection with your customers.
On Facebook, you can establish a branded page, all about your business or organization that people can become fans of. This is shown in their user stream and all of their friends are then introduced to your brand.
By simply existing in these social networking arenas you will collect a certain number of follows, but by really participating and interacting with your community you can greatly increase the amount of impressions for your brand.
Another advantage to social networking sites is the ability to create some useful relative inbound links to your own Web site. Instead of viewing social networking sites as an SEO opportunity — which it certainly is — you can view your social networks as a way to get more people looking at your products.
When you launch a new product line, you can do a complete write-up of it on your blog. Publish the blog, share links to the article into your Facebook and Twitter communities, and you will see the amount of inbound traffic increase. If you are writing helpful, real articles on your blog, people landing on the page will be able to review your information, and click on to your site and view more information about your product or service.
Many times, people see success stories and they ask how would this help them. The first step is to establish yourself in the community. Create your online presence, talk to your customers, ask them to become fans on Facebook, and ask them to follow you on Twitter. If you concentrate on providing real value via these mediums, you will find that your customers will begin to interact more and more.
Giveaways, specials, product announcements, all of these old methods of marketing can be employed using social networks as the platform. You will find that the more personal, helpful, and interactive you are, the more people will become interested in your business. Once you have established a small following, you can find creative, simple ways to further market yourself to a larger audience.
Tina Pugliese's columns on public relations appear in Palm Beach Business.com every other Monday. Her previous column can be found here.
Tina L. Pugliese, APR is an executive coach and counselor for Pugliese Public Relations, a communications firm in Boynton Beach, Florida. Pugliese is an accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America, and is the author of the book, Public Relations for Pharmacists, and e-books, Marketing Your Business for Success, How To Work With The Media, Public Relations Manual — A Guide for Entrepreneurs, and the PR Survival Kit. She can be reached at (561) 889-3575 and by email at Tina@PugliesePR.com. Her web site is www.PugliesePR.com.
Article excerpted from e-book, PR Survival Kit, by Tina L. Pugliese, APR.
