How To Promote New Business On Social Media Platforms

It’s always a major concern for a new Entrepreneur or Businessman who has to compete with big business tycoons in the marketing world. There are many ideas which are really working in getting good start as far as marketing and promotion is concerned. Today I am focusing on one of the widely used platform and very effective marketing place “Social Media”.

Its really amazing that there was time when social media wasn’t an integral part of growing a small business. On one side, many entrepreneurs still struggle with how to best use social media to engage their audiences and promote their businesses, there are signs that they're gaining confidence in their social media skills. According to the data, In 2012, 54% of small-business owners, who participated in a survey, reported they needed help with social media. This year, that number dropped to 45%. This confidence seems to be translating into success, with 72% saying that their marketing efforts across the channels that matter, including social, email, mobile and Web, are working.

Promotion & engagement are really two sides of the same coin. Engagement is embedded in regularly sharing intuition and providing value every time you connect with a customer. This establishes credibility while building trust and inspiring customers to tell their friends about you. Promotion extends your engagement efforts by presenting a valuable offer that’s based on your customers’ interests and needs. Social media amplifies your efforts so you can be found and engage a wider audience to grow your business.

Considering all together, here are few best practices for successfully engaging customers and promoting your small business through social media.

• One-in-seven rule following

This rule is where only one of every seven posts overtly promotes your business. The other six should be attentive on sharing valued content, including posts from the community. This doesn’t mean you can’t promote your business in those other posts; just be sure you pair it with great content.

• Examine conversation-starter questions.

This practice really works and quite interesting as many people enjoy sharing their opinions, so ask Facebook fans to weigh in on topics that are relevant to your business and interesting to them.

• Share your proficiency.

Post little-known, fun facts in the form of questions with a special offer presented to the first person to answer correctly.

• Deliver value.

While including fun posts that reflect your personality is a must, it’s important to create content that benefits your followers. That can mean posting tips on best practices, providing access to white papers, or offering special deals on products or services.

• Enrich the rewards for virtual check-ins.

For a particular period of time, double the points every time a customer checks in Foursquare and triple the points each time he or she brings a friend. Their friends on social networks will see when they’ve checked in while you expand your reach exponentially.

• Build a Pinterest board.

Be sure the board has eye-catching graphics and run a contest through it that will motivate and reward customers for their participation. Be sure to encourage them to re-pin and create their own boards that reflect the initial contest for additional social amplification of your campaign.

• Evade syndicated messages.

While using tools that allow writing one message and having it appear on a variety of social media outlets, you risk losing the sincerity behind the message. You can use similar language as you promote your offer on different sites; just be sure to change up the words while reflecting the tone of each network.

I suggest to small-business owners apply these best practices to social media engagement and promotion, as facts shows that it has already impressive 72% success statistic & continue to rise.