More than a Marketing Tool
Social media is more than just a marketing tool for your business.
It helps us promote our products and services. Our social posts connect us to our customers while introducing us to potential strategic partners or vendors.
As small business owners, social media is more than having presence on Facebook. It’s a place for us to level the playing field with the big brand companies.
So you understand how to use this stuff and most likely, you know why you’re on certain social programs. You already know how to post a Facebook status update and schedule a tweet.
You get all that stuff but how do you take your marketing to the next level. Ever wonder how to take what you know and get a little creative with your marketing messages?
Let’s get your creative on
There comes a time when your marketing feels a bit boring. You’re doing the same text-filled tweets, creating the same type of images and sharing the same kind of links. And sometimes it feels like you hit a wall and don’t know what to do next.
{ trumpets sound – I had to write that in because I’m not sure how to write out what a trumpet sounds like but that noise keeps going off in my head as I’m typing this part. }
Take a look at these five innovative ideas to give you some suggestions to move past what’s not working and stop that ‘hitting the wall’ thing (because man, that hurts!).
1. Use a Hashtag in Your Artwork
Are you promoting an event or a promotion with a specific hashtag? Or maybe you just started using your company’s name as a hashtag?
Whatever you’re promoting, add the hashtag into your promotional artwork. Include your hashtag in your Facebook cover artwork, your promotional shareable images and on your marketing materials.
Think about all the different ways you can include your promotional hashtag into your visual content. Hashtags … they’re not just for text.
2. Celebrate your customers
Create custom images and posts to thank your customers when you hit a milestone in your business. A simple Thank You goes a long way when you’re celebrating an anniversary, opening a new store or when you launch your next big product.
What better way to reinforce your relationship with your customers than to let them know with a You Guys Rock image posted on your Facebook page and attached to your tweets? Tell them in your posts how much you appreciate the fact that if it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t be celebrating today.
3. Find Shareable Content
No matter how long you’ve been using social media, finding quality content to share can be tough to find if you’re just searching online. Try using your Twitter lists to quickly find links for your followers.
Twitter lists are great for putting people together in categories so use your personal sorted system to help you find content easier than a Google search.
(If you don’t know how to set up your Twitter lists, take a look at this Visual Beginner’s Guide to Twitter lists to walk you through the process.)
Most people will find a great article someone tweeted, hit the retweet button and move on to the next thing. But what if you re-purposed that person’s blog post?
We do it for our own content so why not something else that you found that will give your fans something valuable to read? So go ahead and retweet it but then pin it to your Pinterest boards, schedule it into your Facebook fan page posts and share it on LinkedIn.
4. Use Pinterest’s Search
Pinterest is one of the best search engines to give you an insight into the female target audience. If women are your main source of customers, take some time to click into Pinterest’s Popular search option.
These are the top images that are trending with Pinterest users. Use this information to do some research to create your own content.
Are there ideas for image layouts or color combinations that pop out at you? Do you sell something like the hot products that everyone is sharing?
Spend some time looking at the results that show up from the Popular Search and think about how these ideas can transfer into your company’s marketing images.
5. Embed Instagram Videos
Instagram is becoming more than a cool place to share your photos. With their 15 second video program that includes editing and photo-type filters, Instagram now gives small business owners a way to share what’s going on behind the scenes with your customers.
If that wasn’t cool enough …. now you can embed these visual stories into your website. And there’s no techie skills involved.
It’s as simple as clicking a share button to get the embed code to drop into your blog post. If you want to extend the reach of your Instagram video content, read through this article to teach you How to Embed Instagram Videos in your Site.
Image credit: My son Jake 🙂
PS Are tips like these helpful to figure out your social media marketing? Download the Strategy Builder workbook and get more of my secret tips to help you develop your social media plans. It’s an easy to follow marketing strategy workbook to you create successful social media campaigns.
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