If you don’t have your company page up on LinkedIn yet, what are you waiting for?
LinkedIn Company Pages are not only a great way to get more branding for your business, but they are also an excellent way to reach your target market on LinkedIn.
Many business owners and executives like to keep a more private profile on LinkedIn but would also like exposure for their company.
LinkedIn Company Pages are the way to do that. You can grow your company following as large as you want, regardless of the size of your personal network. If you have employees, they can also become administrators of your page and help you promote and manage it, thereby exponentially increasing its visibility.
You can also target your updates and services and products to a specific market. This allows you to craft a message and a presence specific to your different audiences. If someone comes to your Company Page from the financial, legal, medical or Digital Marketing industry, you can customize your message to speak directly to them.
Not only that, but you can create “click-through” banners to entice your target market over to your website, sales page, commerce site or other social media sites. And it’s free!
And you can add video, documents, and pictures to your company page too!
So if you don’t have a LinkedIn Company Page yet, what are you waiting for? And if you do, now’s the time to refocus it to target exactly the people you are hoping to do business with.
#5: Identify Your Outcomes
When we talk about the best thing to do in Social Media Marketing for any given business, we have to begin with what that business is trying to achieve—its “desired outcomes.”
The best thing for a manufacturer of underarm deodorant is likely to be something quite different from what might be best for a company that tests those same products.
The next part of the puzzle is to understand that not all social media efforts are the same. There are some really big differences in approaches, and thus outcomes. The five big approaches are:
· Brand maintenance—monitor your channels and respond when appropriate, and perhaps post a bit here and there.
· Community-building—whether it’s internal advocates, external brand ambassadors or groups of people who share the underlying passions of the brand, in this work you endeavor to join and nurture community.
· Influencer outreach—identify and engage the people who are influential in your passion points or industry.
· Reputation management and development—the project wherein you either repair or develop thought leadership or positive reputation.
· The big splash—these are the big creative campaigns that garner a lot of short-term attention.
#6: Become the Wikipedia of Your Industry
Over the last couple of years, a very interesting shift has occurred with each and every one of us who use the Internet. And what is this shift?
We’ve all grown incredibly impatient online.
In other words, if we go to a business’s website, and we can’t find what we’re looking for, it bothers us. We get frustrated quickly. And unlike a few years ago when we might have “hung around” to try to find the answers we were looking for, we now move on quickly—knowing that if we keep searching, Search Engine Optimization eventually find a website that has the answer(s) we seek.
Interestingly enough, although we’ve all grown more impatient when it comes to websites that don’t bother giving us the answers we’re looking for, we’ve also grown more loyal once we stumble upon the information jackpot.
Basically, if we feel a website is a true “go-to source” for information and answers, we’ll keep coming back—again and again, and again.
It’s for this reason that the best social media strategy any company can take in 2013 and beyond is to become a true teacher (Wikipedia) within their industry. The golden rule of marketing is this:
They ask, you answer.
In other words, if a consumer has ever asked a question, you should be answering it on your website. And considering most industries have literally thousands of potential consumer questions, content should always be growing, evolving and added to.
With the average business website answering about 10 consumer questions, if a company is willing to follow the “They Ask, You Answer” mentality, amazing results will often occur. The brand will grow. Traffic on the site will increase. And above all else, sales will likely have a huge upturn.
For More, Social Media Marketing Tips Part 3 Stay Tuned to SGM Blog.....