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Chapter #1: Introduction to Social Media

Social media is all around us, isn’t it? For example, I’m pretty sure

you check your personal Facebook and/or Twitter accounts from

your smartphone before you even get out of bed in the morning. In

addition, when you turn on your TV to watch the morning news it’s

all about #hashtag this and #hashtag that.

The power of social media is definitely no secret! Not only does it

allow you to communicate your voice to friends and associates who

also have a personal social media account that you are also using,

but rather it has become the dominant source of business

marketing.

If you’re smart, you’ve already started to integrate social media

into your business marketing plan. Whether you are a regular brick-

and-mortar location or even an online business, it’s easy to use

social media as your most dominant and least expensive medium to


attract fans. By doing so, you’ll be able to solid relationships with

both current and potential customers of your goods and services.

However, there might be many who have purchased this course

because they either haven’t started a social media marketing

campaign for their organization or they don’t know how to integrate

social media into their business. If you’re looking to learn the steps

of how to use social media to enhance your business’s profitability

and brand, you’ve purchased the perfect course.

Why Use Social Media? In case you’re not clear on the actual benefits of incorporating

social media into your business, let’s first cover some of the basics:

Social media helps you build a strong brand

In order to be successful in any business, it’s essential to stand out

from the crowd. People need to look at you and your products and

services and know exactly what you stand for. You also need to

create a spot in someone’s mind and subconscious.


In order to do this, you’ll need to have a strong background

utilizing social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

Pinterest, YouTube, etc., so that you can help people gain immediate

insight into what you’re all about and why it’s important that they

should follow you.

Just as an example, one way you can achieve this is through social

media updates which will consistently remind people of your brand.

This is even of greater effect if you’re sharing really “juicy”

information.

Social media helps you find new prospects

Perhaps the first benefit that most people think of when they

ponder about social media is finding new prospects. Social media

marketing (SSM) is not only a great way to find new prospects, fans

and followers, but you can also turn these same individuals into

buyers. Fortunately, social media channels have features that can

help us achieve this. For example, you can use Facebook advertising

to draw people through to your squeeze page and thus turn those

visitors into email subscribers and customers as they go through

your sales funnel.


SMM helps you to build a relationship with your audience

It’s not a secret that people are much more likely to buy from

somebody who they’ve developed a pre-existing relationship with.

When you think about it, how many times have YOU come across a

random website and bought a product from it immediately? This

hardly ever happens unless you’ve done things previously such as

checking out their blog, looking at their social media accounts as

well as their website a few times and perhaps even over a period of

days or weeks before you formed an opinion of the company or

service.

In simple terms, the typical customer has to build up a picture in

their mind of what that company is about before they’ll consider

buying something. Luckily, utilizing social media channels is one of

the best ways of building a relationship with your audience

You can use social media to share content which people in your

niche will find useful and interesting, thus positioning yourself as

an expert.


You’ll also have the ability to interact with your audience and have

conversations with them and as a result, you’ll build a relationship

of trust.

Social media allows you to connect with people who share the same interest

Networking is an essential function you need to be involved in when

you’re running any type of business. This is because connecting

with other people in your specific industry, niche or market can be

extremely useful. For starters, you can help each other out and give

advice to one another. In addition, you can consider promoting each

other’s products or forming some sort of joint venture where you

create and launch products or services online together.

As you build a connection, whether it is personal or online, you’ll

notice that over a period of time, these same people will become

your friends and support group. It’s amazing how inspiring it is to

connect with people who run similar businesses.


Although you might be competitors to some degree (depending

upon which geographic location and demographic you serve), it’s a

wise idea not to treat these people as enemies but rather find

something that you can build upon and from time-to-time you may

even want to meet up and brainstorm with each other.

Social media helps you spy on the competition

On the other side of networking with people in your same industry,

niche or market, it’s important to note that many might not want to

form any sort of alliance with you and many times, they’ll be your

main competitor.

The great thing about social media is that it’s fairly transparent, and

that means that it’s great for spying on the competition. You can

learn so much just by watching how other people run their

businesses – and while I’m not telling you to steal other people’s

ideas, you definitely can “borrow” some of the ones you like and

then put your own spin on them. A great site for doing this is

Twitter; for example, you can observe things like the promotions.

promotions your competitors are running or the types of content


They’re sharing.

SMM can enable you to provide better customer service

If you pay specific attention to any large company’s social media

campaign, you’ll see that this is something that even small scale

businesses are taking advantage of. We’ll show you how to do this

in later lessons.

© copyright 2015 silicon valley digital marketing ... · marketing. if you’re smart, you’ve...

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