Social media most people know that you can use it to keep tabs of your friends and family while sharing the things that are going on in your life. Others even know that you can use it to promote your business. But very few understand exactly how social media marketing works when it comes to promoting their businesses on a local level.
Many years ago, businesses were promoted in just a handful of ways. Most companies would hang out a sign, circulate a few flyers and even mail out a few ads. Most would spring for an ad in the local business directory known as the Yellow Pages and a few would even advertise in their local newspaper. Larger companies could afford to take out a television or radio commercial to advertise. In most cases, these efforts were enough to drum up enough business to let word of mouth advertising take over.
In today’s world, if you aren’t advertising on the Internet, you aren’t advertising.
The successful businesses of today know that word of mouth advertising is the only way to snag the customers they need. However, they can’t rely on people to pass the word in the usual circles. Today, word of mouth advertising happens on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pintrest and Instagram have become front and center when it comes to the way people interact with each other, making social media advertising a key element in your local advertising campaign. However, most businesses who do engage in social media advertising do it all wrong, causing customers to shy away from patronizing their businesses rather than patronizing them.
In order to be successful with your social media advertising campaign you need to post interesting content that is fresh and informative that includes interesting tips and external links. This will pique your customers’ interest and draw them in, which will also boost your business’s profile in Google’s search engine rankings. Google has recently done some modifications to their search algorithms that look less for clever keyword groupings and more for smarter high-quality content. This makes it incumbent on the small business owner to make sure they make modifications as well to stay current.
And speaking of local SEO, it’s important to note that research shows potential customers rarely make it past the first page of search results. Since it takes more than lots of clever keywords sprinkled throughout your website content to get the rise in rankings that make it to the first page or results now, you’ll have to get creative. Check out Google Places for Business which operates somewhat like an online phone book but is much more than that. The listings for Google Places give an Internet user access to your company’s website, some content, photos and more unique information that can help them make an instant decision that your site is the one for them.
You also get automatically added to Google Maps which shows users a local map with a ping for your business that they can relate to more easily. All in all, utilizing local SEO and social media is here to stay, and your best bet for future growth – you just have to have a plan.
