You can’t ignore the ‘big four’
When it comes to social media there are a few core platforms and others which you can use if you have resource. The ‘Big Four’ are generally considered unavoidable.
In this article we will:
- List the Big Four in social media
- Talk about why they are relevant
- Give you tips on how to use them
The Big Four
Admittedly there is some debate about which social media platforms are actually part of the Big Four. For the purposes of this article I am going to be referring to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social media platform is the biggest in the world at the moment. It gets some two billion “likes” from users every day and Facebook commerce is expected to be worth £20bn by 2015.
It’s certainly not to be sniffed at and it makes Facebook one of the most important arms of your social media strategy.
According to the stats, 15 million businesses now have a Facebook page. A brand page is something you set up which is different to personal Facebook pages. It can be customised to represent your brand and get your message across to your customers.
On a Facebook brand page, instead of having Friends – as a personal profile has – you have Likes. These Likes represent the people following your page and they are the people who will see your posts.
Facebook also offers advertising opportunities where you can promote your page to reach wider audiences. Object ads, promoted posts and sponsored stories will all help to push your page in front of the right people so you can increase your following.
Of all internet users, some 36% have a Twitter account – an estimated 485 million people in total with 200 million active users.
It is both an essential research tool and a great tool for marketing – increasing customer engagement and sales. You can use Twitter to announce news, new products, competitions, customer service etc.
You can create your own business page on Twitter in the same way that you create a personal one. There are a few things you need to know when setting up a Twitter account:
Tweets are 140 characters long. Your username is known as a handle and starts which an @. A hashtag # is the way in which people can search for topics. Creating your own hashtag is a good way of gaining a unified Twitter community.
A direct message or DM is a private conversation between you and someone who follows you. If you want to mention someone in your tweet by adding their @ handle – they will be notified of the mention.
Twitter has become a popular tool for customer support. It allows your customers to speak directly to you and giving them a swift answer is the best way to deal with this.
As with Facebook there are ways to promote certain Tweets to get more attention and you can also create expanded tweets with images or product details to get your tweets more attention.
Google+
The social network from search engine giant Google didn’t take off as quickly as they might have liked but it has gained a lot of momentum and is becoming one of the fastest growing platforms out there.
According to research from Global Web Index, it has taken over from Twitter in size with some 343 million active users.
When it comes to pushing content out from your ecommerce site to gain traction with SEO – Google+ is the place to do it. It makes sense really, Google does own it so if you use it they will reward you.
Once you have a good following on Google+ you can create Circles which segregate your followers – you can do this based on gender, age, preferences etc and serve them with posts which are more relevant to them.
LinkedIn is slightly different than the other social media channels mentioned so far. Your goals for using it will be slightly different than for the others. It is a great way to keep on track of your business contacts – a traditional way of creating business opportunities.
If you are looking to recruit for your business and want it to look like a great prospect for talent – LinkedIn is the place to express this. It has over 200 million users and is a fantastic tool for reaching the best employees – even if they aren’t actively seeking to move jobs.
LinkedIn is also a good place to look for the people you need in your supply chain. Do you need to find new wholesalers, couriers or shipment companies? This is a good place to start.
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