ncreasing Your Footprint
These days you can no longer solely rely on your website to promote your business on the Internet. Your plan needs to be expanded to include major search engines and social media platforms that will feed your website with traffic. Your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn will be listed on all major search engines amplifying your website to the power of five.
An Investment That Continues to Pay Dividends
One of the best rewards of utilizing social media to market your business is that once your network has been cultivated, it will continue to pay you. If you have a website that is relevant to your customer base and it is converting properly, your digital footprint will continue to pay you back on your investment for years to come. The more you invest in social media posts, content and increasing your followers, the longer and more deeply you will be entrenched in the market. A lot of people make tons of cash by promoting other companies on their social media networks and they don’t even have a product, they are simply utilizing their network to sell other products. Instead of paying someone else to “rent” their network, why not build your own following of loyal customers and fans?
Remarketing
The best way to grow your business is to maximize your current relationships. Social media, similar to newsletters, keeps you in touch with your current client base. Remarketing simply means getting your customers to repeat a sale with you. Social media is actually going to have the most impact on people that are already your fans. They are now hearing from you on a regular basis, and with the right content strategy in place, your content is actually enriching their lives and keeping you top of mind at the same time.
New Customers
How quickly you acquire new customers from your increased digital footprint largely depends on your business, industry and strategy. It could be instant or it might take a few months of potential customers following your brand before they make a purchase. For example, a product for $29.95 could be purchased from the first time seeing a product. The higher the cost of the item, the longer it will take a new customer to make a decision. How you would acquire a customer manually is done in the same way, the higher the amount of money the longer it takes the build trust with that customer to part with their cash.
The Big Players
Think about how much money you’re spending on promoting your website and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Now, think about how much time and money Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn invest in their marketing and SEO. By making regular social media posts and continuing to be active within your network, you are adding their efforts to yours as they market and index your content that you have posted on their social platforms.
With traditional media, your ad is up for a finite time that you have paid for and then it is gone. When you publish a solid, optimized blog post, it’s quickly indexed by search engines and it will remain public for good. Now, coupled with excellent SEO thanks to the major social networks, they are working hard to get your content viewed and shared. The best part is they are competing with each other to promote your content!
The Power of Viral
Everyone talks about the term viral these days, but what does it really mean? How does it work? The “virility” of a piece of content is solely based on a user’s tendency to share your piece of content. If five people share your Facebook post and then five of their friends share it and five of their friends share it, you can see how the numbers can quickly increase exponentially, even with a low multiplier of five. Each social media platform has a unique term for it: With Facebook it’s Share, with Twitter it’s Retweet, with Instagram it’s Regram. It’s what you should be hoping for on every piece of content you publish.
Written by Joel Weinmaster
Joel is an entrepreneur and digital strategist that started his first internet business out of his parent’s basement. The website was the first nightlife community that quickly caught fire as one of the first social media networks in North America. The brand, Clubvibes.com, had huge success after launching their social community in 2001; two full years before the launch of Facebook that had similar features. Their unique platform coupled nightclubs and online dating, and quickly expanded to 12 major cities in North America until being acquired in 2012. Joel currently is the lead strategist and President of Masterhouse Media, an innovative digital consulting firm based in Vancouver, BC.
