How do I set up social media to establish an online presence for my business?

Here are a few simple tips to get your online presence established using the wonderful and free resource of social media

Why use Social Media?

• Develop relationship with your customers
• Makes it easy to deal with any queries or problems directly with your customer
• Build brand loyalty
• Facebook: over half a billion users
• Twitter: 175 million users
• YouTube: 92 million page views per month
• Accessible
• It’s free!
• Increase sales
• Keep an eye on the competition

Set up a facebook business page and keep it regularly updated with information relevant to your customers

This will help you build on the relationship with your customers and help to attract new ones.

If you already have a personal Facebook account you can click create page and set up a business account with you as the administrator. You can add more administrators later by clicking on “manage admins” on the left hand side of your “home” page.

If you are new to Facebook you can go directly to the create page part and select “I do not have a Facebook account”. You will be asked to enter your email and date of birth and then you are finished.

When you get 25 “likes” then Facebook let you make your own lovely url, for example www.facebook.com/goradiate. Set this up by clicking here.

It is free to set up and maintain a Facebook account but you have the option of paying for advertising your page. If you have the money then it is probably worth getting an ad because Facebook can target people relevant to your business based on gender, location and ‘likes’. They will give you an estimation of how many people they will reach with your ad for the budget you give.

Get on Twitter

Set up a Twitter account, put a short description of your business and an image. Set up the search function to save information about you and your competitors so you are always aware of information that is available relating to you. Do this by typing your name into the search box, press return, your results will appear,  then click “save this search”.

Talk about things of interest to your followers, not just about yourself- share links and tips relevant to your industry.

Ask questions and get feedback from your followers.

Show that your business has a human side and be nice!

Blogging

Creating a blog as part of your website can be another great resource for your business with which to connect with your customers and project the right image for your business. You can show off your expertise and give helpful tips and also advertise offers and get feedback.

Write informally, keep the tone positive and enthusiastic. And don’t be afraid of throwing in an emoiticon or two Building your customer base through social media takes time so be patient and enjoy it.

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