Business Benefits from Social Media Networks

Trying to run a small business can be trying enough without having to run an expensive and time consuming ad campaign. While there is no replacement for traditional advertising, either via the internet, radio, or TV, social media networks can greatly augment these methods. With the soaring costs of search engine optimization (SEO), any edge that you can give yourself is greatly appreciated, especially when that advantage is free of charge. This may not be true for Facebook in the near future, but all of these social networking sites are completely free and can generate valuable customers and ad revenue. Adding a social networking account will get your company name out there and can easily get you to a position of high esteem within your field. If you use them correctly, these sites can drive traffic to your site and increase the likelihood that customers will come to you. Here are several things that you can do to accomplish this.

Set up multiple accounts

You will only need one account per social media site, but you will want one on every one of them. Any time you hear of a new one, you should immediately establish an account. Most of these are free and they generate revenue from your account page. This is why they will help you to drive traffic to your pages. You can also use your profile to back link your company website, drastically improving your SEO. Just having your website listed on your accounts will get people to click through your site. This is key to running a solid website. You want your URL listed all over the web. You will also have the ability to keep people up to date about your specials, happenings, industry news, and events that you are supporting. You will want to update these sites at least once a week. The next step will make that much easier to do, but until you get to that point, you will want to make it a habit to update them. You can do this by adding in as little as one sentence or link to one news story in your "what's new" or tweet box.

Establish a Blog

The first thing that you will want to do is set up a blog. These may be "a dime a dozen," but they can pay dividends. Not only can they directly link to your site, but they can also hold ads from Google and Yahoo. These ads can generate some revenue from these sites. By signing up for a free ad account, you can not only publish ads to your site, but you can also get paid from those ads. If your site picks up enough traffic, you can be targeted by certain markets for the rental of your ad banners. These companies will pay much higher dividends to advertise on your site. This will not only boost the amount you get paid, but it will also get you some brand name recognition from the top companies that advertise on these sites. Another benefit from a blog is the ability to link it directly to your other social accountants. One thing that is important in a blog is to back link other bloggers. All this is consists of is adding a link to another blogger's entry. IF you find a story that you agree or disagree with, write about it. When you write your entry, add in a comment like; "I disagree (or agree) with Joe Schmuckatelli in his latest blog entry that the world is flat." In this example, you would want to add a link to his blog entry where it says "his latest blog entry". Many bloggers, especially professional ones, will scour the web looking for back links. They will often return the favor in their later posts. Nothing brings page views like a friendly argument via the blogosphere. By linking your blog to all the social media sites, you will increase the traffic to your stories and entries and increase the chances that this will happen.

Link all your accounts

Just like all the major companies on the internet, you should have little icons on your website that allow people to subscribe to your social feed. All of the major sites will offer the code for these buttons free of charge. It increases their traffic and ad revenue, so they are more than happy to aid you in this. This will provide SEO links, keywords, and get your business more recognized. It also makes your site look a little more official and professional. This also gives your clients the ability to easily keep tabs on everything that is happening with your business.

Increase your rankings

Many of the newer media sites have a way to increase the ranking of your business. Sites like Foursquare have customer ratings. You can either sign in anonymously and post positive reviews, or get a group of fellow business owners together to write positive reviews for each other. This will greatly increase your traffic and give your business a much better appearance. There will be several people that will judge which company to frequent based on these reviews. You can always improve on your client base by driving traffic in this method.

Utilize business database and networking sites

There have been several different business networking sites and databases to pop up in the recent past. LinkedIn is one of these type of sites. It is full of professionals looking for other professionals. Many business owners will use this network to find someone to purchase from. This can be easily used to land some big contracts and future business from major companies. It does not matter whether you are in sales, support, or service industries. If another business or job seeker needs your type of product, LinkedIn will direct them to you. This is a great networking site that you can use to bring in some major clients and a lot of repeat business.

There are many more benefits from social networking sites. By following these ideas and several others that can come up with, you can easily make these social sites work for you. They can be very useful in ad campaigns or just spreading the word about your business. There are many uses for these sites. You just want to make sure that you remember that they are for business purposes and keep all of your posts professional. Do not go on rants or jam them up with video game high scores. By keeping them updated and professional, you can help your business grow and prosper online. You will want to use MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Foursquare, and any other social networking sites you can find. Yahoo and Google searches will point them all out to you. Once you have the accounts set up, spend a little time filling out your profile for each one. You want to keep a lot of detail in these profiles and always link to your site for more information. A brief description of who you are and what you offer should do the trick. Associated Content is a great blog site that you can easily add to any of these social sites and use the RSS feed to add this to any sites that are not supported directly. This site will also pay you a little for the traffic that you get and the stories that you write. This is just one more of the many tools out there. Make sure you keep everything up to date at least once a week though. If you account never has anything new, there will be no reason for people to come back.