Here’s a quick little blog we did for EforAll SouthCoast on social media...
Social Media for Businesses 101
Today’s class focused on establishing and maintaining your business’ social media presence. Fueled by a passionate and energetic lecture from Pidalia’s Scott Dubois, this lesson was anything but boring.
We live in a fast paced, competitive, and hyper connected society where social media accounts are the key to connecting your business to the world. Companies like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr provide platforms for companies to establish their brand through publishing original and creative content that is viewed by users from around the world. The best part about social media platforms is the fact that they are typically free for users to create accounts and use. This provides businesses with an inexpensive mean to reach millions of potential clients.
The All-Star Line Up
Social media is dominated these days by a few key players, which include Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest. Each of these services has their own unique flare. Instagram is a place for primarily visual content, a photographer and artists’ dream. Twitter gives you 140 characters to express yourself in a way to gain followers. Snapchat is the newcomer to the social media game but has quickly established itself among the game’s best players. Snapchat allows users to share visual 10 second snaps for a single view, or post them to your followers for 24 hours. Facebook is the king of social media and needs no explanation these days. A major take home lesson from Scott was his introduction to Facebook’s ad manager, an incredibly useful tool for any business from Mom and Pop start-up to Fortune 500 corporations. Facebook advertisement is smart, allowing you to target specific demographics using its massive user database and brilliant algorithms.
#HashTag
You may have recently heard of a little something known as ‘hashtags’. These terms like #Winning or #ThrowbackThursday are added to posts by users to associate them with a certain cause or topic, all completely searchable by the platforms’ user database. The introduction of hashtags to social media, by Twitter, was revolutionary. It allowed millions of people to easily find content associated with a topic in interest in the click of a search button. The hashtag is a marketers’ dream and should be utilized by any entrepreneur trying to establish and maintain their brand. In the wise words of Scott, if you’re not including at least 10 hashtags you’re not doing enough!
Establish Dominance!
For your brand to have worth in the realm of social media, your content is the key. You need to separate yourself from the competition and captivate your target audience. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the others give you a free channel to reach the world with your message. What it all comes down to with being a dominant social media presence is being creative, original, and most importantly consistent.
