Social Media Questions That Business Owners Ask

As a business owner, it isn’t necessarily easy to decide which social media channels work best for your business. There is so much information from which to choose and each one offers different innovative features. You need to choose wisely.

At this point, you are an active participant in social media. Before you can actually make any kind of decision, you need to research what is available thoroughly so that you can make the best choices for your business. Cost will most likely not be an issue. When it comes to investment and social media, it isn’t about the money that you will need to spend. Rather, it is about the time and effort that you will need to put into your social media activities so that it pays off for your business and allows you to achieve greater success than ever.

There are some common questions that occur to business owners regarding social media.

If I don’t have a location, how can I successfully use location-based marketing?

Location-based marketing tools, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, etc, are designed to enable people to find the best spots in close proximity to where they are. Brick-and-mortar businesses take advantage of this opportunity by offering promotions that are specific to their venues. When a prospective or existing customer checks in to a particular business on their mobile device, they will immediately see whichever promotions are currently available to them. There are many different ways to use location-based services and it is challenging to businesses that only exist online. However, it is far from impossible and there are definitely plenty of opportunities out there. You just need to be as creative as possible. For example, an effective approach if you have a blog or website is to leave tips in venues that are related to the content that you are offering. Another effective way to get involved with location-based marketing is by connecting with apps (applications) that act as advertisements to users in specific locations.

 Will group buying be good for my business?

Group buying is a practice that a lot of business owners have been getting involved with. Group buying is when a large number of consumers get really good deals by buying products and/or services together. Several websites, such as Groupon, BuyWithMe, and LivingSocial, are good examples of this and have been very successful so far. Websites for group buying have the potential to earn people a lot of money in a short amount of time. Before you can make an informed decision about group buying for your business, you should make sure that you are aware of all of the positives and negatives. Then you can decide. Another positive aspect of group buying is that because there are so many consumers involved, it allows you to increase your list of new prospective customers. One thing that you should keep in mind as the business owner is your brand’s reputation. It is critical that the group-buying website is a good fit with your branding and your target audience.

Will I be able to start a blog if I don’t have any technical acumen?

You definitely don’t have to be a computer genius to start a blog. You can start with the simplest blog platform. If you don’t feel that it is working for you the way that you would like it to, you can hire someone to make it work for you. If your goal is to create some simple pages (such as an About Us page and a Contact Us page), and update your blog posts at regular intervals, there are several tools that you can use to accomplish this (such as Tumblr). Several simple themes for small businesses are available and the tool is easy to use. Once you have created your pages, updating your blog is a matter of inputting your new blog post, typing in a few descriptive tags, and publishing the article.

How do I make sure that my company’s social media pages are optimized?

At the hear of search engine optimization (SEO) is content. First and foremost, you need to make sure that your social media profiles are all complete and that the URLs that you have chosen have your business’s name incorporated. If you choose a certain URL and it isn’t available, you can modify the URL somewhat. However, be careful to keep it as close to your company name as possible. Once you have established the URL, make sure that the following elements are filled in: biography, products, location, mission, etc. Make sure that you include back links on all of your other pages. The more numerous your back links,  the higher your rankings will be on the search engine pages. Maker sure that you are consistent about updating the information that you feel is important to share with others. Make sure to keep your target audience in mind regarding the type of information that you are sharing.

Why hasn’t the number of people who follow my business through social media increased?

There are many possible reasons why your following might not be increasing. There are several things that you should examine if that is the case.

• Is your messaging too promotional?
• Does your messaging speak about how great you and your business are instead of telling the other person what you can do for him or her?
  
• Are you coming across as a salesperson?

If any of these apply to you, you may be making people feel discouraged rather than encouraged without even realizing it. The goal is to get as many high-quality followers as possible and you need to make sure that you interact with people in the most appropriate and sensitive manner possible.

Conclusion

The questions that have been discussed here are very important and very basic. They are questions that are on many business owners’ minds and if you take the advice that is given here, you will strengthen your social media savvy and your efforts will pay off. The result will be greater success for your business.

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