Regardless of whether you’re a start-up or an established business, it can be tough to promote your business on a limited budget. Often, the most effective marketing campaigns are those that are creative within their means. Though it can help, you don’t have to spend money to promote your business.
Even some of the largest companies are now turning to inexpensive social media venues to get the word out about their products. Here are some cheap ways to use social media to punch your way into the market.
Blog.
A blog is an excellent and increasingly popular way to not only get the word out about your business, but also to create a dialogue with customers. A WordPress blog is completely free. If you can commit yourself to writing one high-quality, engaging blog post a day (or hire someone else to write it), in a few months’ time you will have tens of thousands of visitors hungry for the content that only you can provide.
The key benefit of a blog is the dialogue that it allows you to have with customers. Always try to cultivate a solid batch of comments for every post. Comments are free content. Usually the people commenting are passionate subject matter experts in the field, and potentially valuable contacts for your business. This also allows you to hear what your market wants, and how you can better get it to them. Always attach “Retweet” and “Like” buttons after every article so people can share your post with their friends.
Facebook.
Everybody and their Mom now has a Facebook page. Facebook has quickly become one of the top marketing tools alongside Google’s plethora of marketing gadgets. Use Facebook to share pictures, links, and blog posts to your own blog and other related items of interest.
The key with Facebook is to try and be very organic. When marketing on Facebook, think of it as a way to develop relationships and create exposure rather than trying to sell products. If you have a smart phone you can do this extremely quickly, several times a day to create an engaging story of your businesses’ day-to-day.
Twitter.
For such a simple platform, Twitter can be one of the most difficult to master, although one of the most effective if done correctly. Twitter, like Facebook, is not meant to be a sales tool, but rather a way to indirectly connect with fans and customers. Much like Facebook, you can capture interesting moments of your operation or daily life in your business, or just tweet links of related subject matter. In fact, you can set your Facebook to share anything you tweet, so it can all be done seamlessly.
The key to promoting yourself on Twitter is to follow and engage relevant people within your business or industry, and add value to your peers by offering insight and expert opinion.
Use Video!
Your average web surfer has a rapidly diminishing attention span. With all the ads and links, it can be hard for someone to focus on text alone for longer than a few minutes at a time. You can capture people’s attention better through video, and really show your personality and enthusiasm to your visitors, followers, and friends.
