Social Media Marketing For Your Small Business
Standing on the Social Media Platform
Social media is a platform for self-promotion. It’s about making your profile engaging with the network at large to share, inquire, and express. Since the goal of platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest is to reach as wide an audience of interested parties as possible, creating a presence that is intriguing and visible is a necessary component to getting results. (Learn the basics to social media marketing here, with CM2 Media’s article on the 3Cs of social media content strategy: creation, curation, circulation.)
Social media as a platform for business, is still about self-promotion – the promotion and marketing of your services, your product, your website, and your storefront. It’s not really about getting the most followers, it’s about expanding your network to engage more interested parties. Instead of promoting a person, you are promoting your “brand”.
Does that mean a more introverted and modest person cannot create a successful social media profile for their business? Does that mean that personal shyness will prevent your brand from promoting itself? No. But in order to succeed, the business’s social media profile will have to exhibit a sense of ego that the business owner does not necessarily exhibit themselves. Shy just won’t fly in the world of social media.
Internet Highways Need Clearly Marked Off-Ramps
Whether you’re a small business or a big business, getting your name out there is no minor feat. In the digital age, marketing is about speaking with your brand’s voice and making that voice heard over the din of all your competitors. The internet is not a single lane highway with one exit that parades a long line of customers past your website. In order to show up on public maps at all, you have to actively garner attention. You have to put up roadside billboards to tell people which exit to take to get to your store. You need to send commercials touting your services out on the radio waves so people know to plot a course to your URL. If potential customers don’t know that you exist, it’s unlikely that they’ll ever find their way to your front door.
First Stop: Brand Ego
In most instances, the person that runs the business is not also the brand itself – like it is with Beyonce or to some extent, Steve Jobs with Apple. Usually the owner and the brand are separate entities. So, if you are a humble businessman trying to get your company’s product out to the masses, consider social media marketing not as a means of tooting your own horn, but as a tool to toot your business’s horn. Undoubtedly, you are proud of your company and what you can offer your clients. It isn’t pompous to show people what you have to offer; rather, sharing information about your services with them is the most effective means of presenting them with accessible and useful options.
Second Stop: Buyer Ego
As the Social Media Examiner explains, in the world of social media marketing, your brand can also succeed by catering to the ego of the public. By offering the people something they want, making them feel good, or making them feel like your services/products would make them feel better, you are giving them the option to improve the quality of their life and the variety therein. (Find out how to capitalize on your social media marketing accessibility here, on CM2 Media’s blog.) The key is to offer value. Every time you put your brand out there, try to work into it a message or a purpose that has value to the audience. If your demographic is youth, incorporate mall marketing and print marketing into social media hashtag campaigns and contests. Engage your customers by confidently making your business more visible and more accessible on all platforms.
Making New Connections Means Meeting New People
Confidence does not have to be delivered at a yell. You don’t have to be flashy to get people’s attention. The need for your business to display some ego is purely about marketing and promotion. There is a social media approach out there that’s a fit for your business approach. That’s where a digital marketing agency will show results. Enlisting a branding company or a marketing agency like CM2 Media, is about gaining professional expertise in matching your brand’s ego to your buyer’s ego. The proper approach and the right balance will bring the right type of attention to your business for all the right reasons.
Displaying your business’s ego on social media is about confidence. Confidence that your product is worth other people’s time and attention. You won’t grow your network if you’re not willing to introduce yourself to new people. It’s not about your personality, it’s about the persona of the brand. Be proud of your business and show people why your business has reason to be proud.