Using social media for business, if used correctly, can generate a lot of leads, brand awareness, and or sales. If you’re creative with your posting and you pay for advertising you can really build a following. For argument sake, I’m bundling YouTube in with other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Some people may be tempted to ask why do I need my own website, or why does my business need a website, if I can get all that I need from social media.
The shortest answer is this: You don’t own those social media accounts, and by extension the followers you may have there. You don’t own the information you’ve posted there. They belong to someone else. You have no control over what Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. does. They can change their policies, shadow ban you, delete 1/2 or all of your followers, suspend your account, etc. You are at their mercy.
If you build your foundation on someone else’s property they can destroy your house whenever they want…
Remember when MySpace was all the rage? Yep, they come and go and if you are using social media for business, you need to insure your business from THEIR whims and failures.
Your Goal Should Be This:
Your goal should be to use social media as a tool to get traffic to your website and to get people to sign up to your email list. If you have your own email list, then you have a way to contact your customers and people interested in your product or service independent of any 3rd party platform such as social media. Imagine if you have 1 million followers on Twitter and you wake up one morning and see that you now have 10,000. You can complain to twitter all you want; maybe you’ll get them to restore you missing followers, but probably not. But if you have designed your social media efforts to get people to sign up to your email list, then even if you lose all your followers on Twitter or Facebook, you can still email your list: you’re not dead in the water.
Social media is an awesome tool, but it’s not YOUR tool, you don’t own it. There are several good choices for email list solutions. For a standalone tool I recommend Aweber. You may ask why are you recommending Aweber if your argument against social media is that it’s not yours… well, Aweber’s business is providing you with email list services and you can back up your list, etc. the LIST belongs to you, and the list is where value resides.
This is The Winning Solution:
Combine an email list with a tool to help get people to sign up to your list, and you have THE winning solution. What do you call that type of tool? You call it a funnel, or a sales funnel (even if your goal for your funnel is not making a sale, you still call it a sales funnel). One of the best is Kartra (they also have an email list component) – click the link and check them out.
Remember, when using social media for business, think about the various tools you use and make sure that the end result of all your efforts actually belongs to you and not a 3rd party that you have no control over.
I put all the information you need to get going in the right direction in my Insiders Guide to Promoting Your Business Online.
Until next time,
Fred
[addtoany]