Social media marketing to grow your business just makes sense. I’ve been on the most influential social sites for seven or eight years now and continue to use them for my business in a variety of ways. Let’s have a discussion of the sites I feel are the most important during 2015 and how they will help you to accelerate your success.

The ‘Big Three’ of social media continue to be LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Additionally, YouTube is crucial to your business success, and this year I have added Google Plus, Pinterest, and Instagram to my list of ‘must have’ sites for your online presence. Let’s take a look at how each one of these sites can help you.

Facebook can be time consuming and trivial if you are there to connect with friends and family. Instead, I recommend creating a Facebook ‘page’ using the name of your business or the name of your city and industry. For example, if you visit https://www.facebook.com/SantaClaritaDentist you will see a page for a dentist in the Santa Clarita area. This is an excellent way to connect with existing and new clients and customers on a regular basis.

LinkedIn was more of a corporate site in years past, but now the social aspect of it has taken precedence. Set up your profile and then allow it to search through your email contacts to see who else you know that is already there. Then start reaching out to people in a systematic way to build your connections. I’ve done this over the past two years and now have a network of more than twenty million people around the world! The next step is to set up a profile for your business. They have a step by step way to do this quickly.

Twitter is much more than just the one hundred forty characters you can ‘tweet’ out at any time. Use it to send messages about your business throughout the day. There are sites you can use to do this for you so that you hit several time zones across the country or around the world. You can now also add photos to your tweets, so use this feature to show what you are doing in your business. For example, the dentist could tweet about the importance of brushing and flossing, and start a discussion about how often people should come in for a routine checkup and cleaning. Once you get the conversation started people will take notice.

Pinterest is also all about pictures, photos, and images. Set up a business profile there and add some photos of yourself, your business, and what you do to serve your clients and customers. This site uses something called ‘boards’ that are intended to share details on a specific topic. Using the dentist as an example, one board could talk about cosmetic dentistry and show some examples of people who have had work done. Another could be about the office itself and show photos of the dentist and all of the support staff. Search for the keywords of your business to see who else is using this site to get the word out about their business and connect with them.

Google Plus requires you to sign up through a free Gmail account. Then you can update regularly with the happenings of your business. Use it to announce anything that customers and clients would be interested in knowing about. Again, updates with images are always more interesting. Also, connect with others there using your email contacts.

YouTube is also an excellent way to get the word out about your business. See what the dentist has done at http://YouTube.com/SantaClaritaDentist. The idea here is to tell the story of your business through short (under five minutes is best) videos. You can easily create these with your smart phone and then upload them to YouTube on your phone as well.

You can see that social media is here to stay, so have some fun with it and let the world know who you are and what your business has to offer. Make sure visitors have a way to follow up, such as including your phone number, blog, or website address. The best part of this, in my opinion, is that social media is free. There are paid advertising options available, but they are optional and too complicated to discuss here.

Here are the links to my social media pages – let’s connect!
Connie Ragen Green on…

LinkedIn
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Pinterest
Instagram

How are you using social media marketing to grow your business? Share with us by leaving a comment.