Social media is on the minds of entrepreneurs these days. They believe that if they master social media transactions, their businesses will grow. This trend is being discussed among entrepreneurs and on the Internet regularly. What about the trend should you know?
More to Starting a Business Than Opening Doors
New business owners have minds full of ambition and great ideas to solve problems in a market like this photocopier. They can turn their solution into a product or service. But, they fail to realize that starting a business involves so much more than launching a new product or service.
Many new businesses score well with the solution they've created including the logistics of suppliers, manufacturing, and distribution to bring that product or service to market. However, one of the greatest challenges of starting a new business centers on marketing:
For example, a woman started a business selling franking machines. Publicity, search engine optimization, and product sampling were combined with other marketing and advertising concepts as if they were all the same things. She was confused because she had too many options and considerations.
Ask Questions to Figure Out Your Market
When considering how to market your new product or service, you should think about several important questions. Social media can find answers to those questions for business owners:
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Who is talking about the problem your product solves?
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Where are they talking about it and what language are they using?
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Who are the influencers actively able to affect awareness and product use?
To help answer those key questions, here are three ways entrepreneurs can use social media to gain insight, grow awareness and optimize their online marketing.
Listen to customers: Social media monitoring is an ongoing effort to assess trends about a particular topic. The woman selling the tea could leverage a basic tool like Social Mention, a mid-market tool like Trackur, or a robust tool like Radian6 to uncover conversations from real customers as they discuss their favorite teas, where to find them, what they like, and what they don't like. With social listening, entrepreneurs can discover key insights that could fuel social media outreach, content and engagement for the tea.
Content is key: Content for marketing often starts with a blog where new business owners can discuss the story of their product or service. The blog will explain how it solves important problems in the marketplace. A blog can also serve as a communication channel with other blogs in the industry, the media, customers and a community. You can use the link of the blog as a springboard for your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn posts.
Monitor, measure and refine approach: Social media analytics and optimization are used by successful businesses. They tap into marketing performance data and web analytics to reveal insights into the success of specific messages, media and offers. Those data-driven insights can provide where to optimize social media marketing efforts for better performance. You can decide to change topics on blog posts, words in your tweets, or pictures shared on Pinterest. Google Analytics is an easy choice for entrepreneurs because of the free cost and robust features including some social media-tracking integration.
Beyond these tips, entrepreneurs have to use social media effectively. You don't want to post on everything. You should pick the places that work best for the type of business you have. Food works well on Pinterest, but construction equipment wouldn't be good on that site. LinkedIn groups might be the ticket for your software-as-a-service company, but you wouldn't want to use LinkedIn if you sell baby clothes. Used effectively, you can be successful in your new business using social media.
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