You have decided it is time to start promoting your business over social media.  Maybe you created a facebook page for your business, but now what?  There are two sides to being successful, the technical side and the marketing side. Without understanding what to do for the marketing side, figuring out how to do the technical stuff won’t get you very far. Part one of this five part series of practical tips will help you understand what it takes to successfully start promoting your business using social media. We’ll also talk about how FYItag helps you with some of these issues.  So, let’s jump in.

1.      Relax -The first tip in this series may be the most important one.  When you sit down to write for social media, it is extremely important to remember that whatever you do, no matter what the topic, never, ever forget... to be yourself.  Yes, you read it right. Chances are that your business is a success because of you and because of how you interact with customers.  So when people decide to follow your business over social media they want to hear your voice, not something that is formal, dry and overwritten.  Talk to them instead of “at” them.  Keep it short, simple and in the same voice you would use if you were speaking with them in person. 

The FYItag Social Media Planner can help.  It is an easy to understand calendar-based workflow and it gives you the flexibility to plan out what you will say in advance or if needed to publish immediately.  If you are super excited about a new product or event that isn’t happening until next month, it can be easy to overwork your post and publish out all of your ideas and excitement in one post. Instead, capture that excitement while it is fresh and spread the news out in a series of smaller more conversational posts.  FYItag will take care of publishing to all of your social media sites at the exact time you decide, so you don’t need to be in front of the computer when you want it published.  Don’t just stare at the blinking cursor on your screen wondering how to say it all THAT DAY.  Get your ideas down when you have time and plan the conversation out on the calendar. You’ll be ahead of the game.  Working this way lets you stay in your true voice which keeps your conversation authentic.

2.      Reach as many people as you can - It’s common to start promoting your business on a social network you are already familiar with. It makes sense, because if you already have a personal facebook presence, you probably understand the basics of how it works.  Using social media for business can be overwhelming enough without having to learn the quirks of several new social media networks.  Who has time for that, right?  I hate to say it, but you can’t get by with just one social media network. The fact is your audience is fragmented.  Some of your customers will only use Facebook while others are dedicated to Twitter or other social media networks you’ve never heard of before.  The best thing you can do is represent your business on as many social networks as possible and make sure you consistently post to all of them.  Another issue is that you never know what will show up in a search, and being on several social media sites will help your search presence. For the record, it doesn’t count if you just sign up for a site like Twitter and then ignore it, that is the worst thing you can do.

Using the FYItag Social Media Planner you can publish everywhere the same way, from the same calendar. It hides the complexity that comes from dealing with different social media networks and lets you easily publish and maintain conversations on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube simultaneously.  Social Media by nature is conversation based, and if you are talking to your customers they are likely to respond to what you publish.  FYItag aggregates all of the responses to your posts from all of the social networks into one place, so you can easily read and respond to what people are saying without the hassle of going to each site. The way FYItag is built lets us plug in new social networks as they come out and lets you keep the same workflow.  Check out the video for a quick introduction on how it works.  http://fyitag.com/content/product-demonstration

If you need help creating a social media presence for your business or setting up multiple sites or even if or you are unsure which sites are the best to promote your business, FYItag can help with that too.  Visit us at http://fyitag.com to find out more or email us at info [at] fyitag [dot] com

Johnathon Howard

CMO

Please check out the other blogs in this series:

Part 2 in the blog series: Setting up for success

Part 3 in the blog series: What to say

Part 4 in the blog series: Ideas and the power of pictures

Part 5 in the blog series: Social Media – Your new Toy