#5 Social Media Tools Every Entrepreneur Needs To Use Push away old, outdated marketing methods and embrace these high precision, ROI driven methods to boost your sales
By Santosh Kanekar •
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You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
You are thumbing through your Facebook feed looking at the vacation photos put up by your friends. You mutter, "I am getting fried here in this heat and these guys are rubbing it in posting their snow photos."
You press Like and move to the next photo about someone's half-eaten pizza in a fab new place.
Like.
As you keep pressing Like on an auto pilot mode, thoughts come to your mind.
- Is social media only for these posts or is there more to it?
- How do I use it for my business or is it only for personal use?
- How do I know which ones are right for me and which I should avoid?
There is too much information out there and everyone seems to have their favorites. How do I choose what is best for my business?
Use these five social media tools, push away old, outdated marketing methods and embrace these high precision, ROI driven methods to boost your sales.
Isn't this a job search site? Well, yes that is the way it started.
But, it is now the de facto site for professional connections.
As an entrepreneur, it helps you to showcase your services and most importantly connect with potential clients.
It is a great sales prospecting tool as it helps right from identification of prospects to pitching to prospects.
You would have heard that LinkedIn was acquired by Microsoft. Trust Microsoft to dialup CRM and sales management tools as they want to take on Salesforce.com.
This is good news for you as you will have online sales systems, which will work for you silently as you focus on offline sales.
LinkedIn also has its own publishing platform. Thisplatform enables you to generate and publish content which helps your buyer solve their problems. LinkedIn Pulse is great content marketing platform which you must leverage.
A very potent feature of LinkedIn is LinkedIn Groups. There are several groups to match all industries from dentists to consultants. Be part of these groups and add value. Don't just advertise your services as you may get thrown out by the administrators of the group.
Better still, form your own group. You could make group with your prospective clients. Offer them value first. Once they see your expertise, they will you bring you on board as a partner.
The next step is Partnerships. Are you in an industry where you need to work with other service providers?
May be you are into computer hardware and you could collaborate with software resellers when pitching to clients? Maybe you are a plastics manufacturer who can work with other part manufacturers to provide a composite solution to your client?
Use LinkedIn to find potential partners. Offer to share your customers and build a joint value. These partnerships would be a huge win for your clients as well as your partners which will add to your business.
To recap, use LinkedIn for
- Direct Sales prospecting
- Content Marketing through publishing
- LinkedIn Groups
Wait, isn't Facebook for posting photos of your vacations and children's school achievements? It is and more.
This is a truly vast social network where people come to stay connected with their friends and extended circle.
As an entrepreneur, it is also a captive audience who is browsing for asubstantial time. If you have targeted ad campaign, it can reach your audience when they are most open to messages which help them.
You could also setup a business page which can showcase your products and services. You can even sell your products from within the page. Imagine having your ownecomm site within Facebook.
With Facebook promoting videos, Facebook Live is an excellent way to connect with your customers and provide great content. Let's say you are a restaurant: You could do a live walk through your kitchen to showcase your expertise.
You can take it one notch up and setup a Facebook Group where you could add value to your clients. E.g. Lot of coaches use Facebook Groups to do group coaching.
To recap
- Facebook Advertising
- Facebook Business Page
- Facebook Groups
Talk about food, fashion and fitness, Instagram is right up there as the best social media channel to promote these businesses.
With 300 million daily active users and 500 million monthly users, Instagram is expanding rapidly as a visual platform to showcase your skills and expertise.
Even beyond these businesses, it helps to showcase your services in a visual manner.
You could talk about your clients, how you are adding value to them and this would be of interest to potential customers. Do this in video format.
You could then take that video and do Instagram advertising.
Give exclusive deals only for Instagram.
Use hashtags appropriately for your prospective clients to discover you
Instagram has also started Business page services where customers can now send you anemail. How cool is that?
To recap
- Post videos and posts which provide helpful content
- Use the content videos to do Instagram advertising
- Give Instagram only deals
- Use hashtags to help in search
- Use the Instagram business page to integrate with Email system
Isn't Twitter only for news and political tirades?
While the bulk of the Twitter traffic is around those topics, I look at Twitter as an excellent way to check the pulse of your customer.
If your Twitter account is thoughtful and highly customer responsive, it goes a long way in customer engagement.
Some business leaders across the world stay directly in touch with their customers through this medium. It is a great medium to get instant feedback and directly connect with your clients.
Twitter is also a great lead generation tool. If you provide useful content and offers on your twitter channel, you will have prospects signing up or taking your offers online which can then be integrated into your sales automation channel.
To recap, use Twitter
- for customer engagement
- for direct connect and instant feedback
- as a lead generation system
Google Plus
Never heard of it! You might say.
Here are some stats: 300 million+ are active users on Google Plus.
Arranged in circles, people come here on specific interests and are very engaged.
If your business is part of a highly engaged circle, it willcreate the buzz around your brand and also generate leads.
Google also gives a small advantage in SEO when you post your content on Google Plus. Besides if you are a local business, being on GooglePlus helps in scoring higher in local searches in Google Plus.
To recap
- Use Google Plus for creating buzz in your circles
- It helps in your SEO ranking
- A significant factor in local searches on Google which is increasingly important
That's it.
These five are sufficient for you to launch your growth rocket. Check the social media trends and leverage them correctly. Engage with the media in a context relevant to it. Keep a lazer focus on driving conversions.
Once you have set the ball rolling, you will find an automated lead generation system working for you. The system will free your time for more important things.
Like taking a vacation to the places with snow, maybe?
