Best social media sites for small business by ericwelke

Articles from EricWelke.com Best Social Media Sites for Small Business by Eric Welke

I have previously discussed how small businesses can use social media. In those discussions I strongly emphasized that you should be on these sites to grow your customer base through engagement. I have now compiled a list of the best social media sites for small business and based it on the number of users and their Alexa.com rating. 1. Facebook (901 million users) – You need to be here. A lot of your existing customers are probably here already. Search for your business using Facebook’s search box. There is a big chance you already a have Place presence. You should claim it as soon as possible to get all the fans that it has organically collected. 2. Twitter (555 million users) – Twitter users have a different profile than Facebook users. The emphasis of this site is on quick updates from people that a user follows. It’s more real time than Facebook and more interactive too because of the 140 character limit. If your business has a lot of customers with smartphones then you will need to engage with them here. The ability to engage in real time with your customers makes Twitter one of the best social media sites to be on. 3. Google+ (170 million users) – Google’s experiment with social networks may not be as popular as Facebook but it has its own user base and has the potential to grow bigger since people with Gmail can easily create a new profile here. Google + recommendations or +1s also help your site gain more relevance to the search engines. 4. Linkedin (150 million users) – compared to the other social networking sites, Linkedin is quite formal since it is focused more on work and business contacts. If your business regularly deals with other businesses then a

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detailed profile here will usually give a good impression to prospective clients. This is also a great place to prospect for new sales leads. Pinterest (11.7 million users) – this is one of the fastest growing and most popular sites this year. Aside from being a good site to showcase your products or ideas, there is a lot of unexplored marketing potential here. Due to the steady growth and the buzz surrounding Pinterest, this is one of the best social media sites to be on right now. Flickr (32 million users) – this is another photo sharing site and is great for showcasing high resolution pictures of your products. Instagram (30m users) – this also another picture sharing site that is very popular with smartphone users. They haven’t built a full web presence yet but their reach on the mobile market is quite huge. Use this in conjunction with your other social networking profiles and easily get existing fans to follow your Instagram profile. Youtube.com – no exact value for number of users but they get 800 million unique user visits per month and that’s a huge potential market for you. It does take more effort to produce a video than just posting a picture but the possible benefits are much larger. Any video you post here can also be shared on your other social networking profiles and eventually they pass likes and views to each other. Going viral on Youtube is can be a huge boost to your online popularity which can translate to more customers for you.

It may seem a bit daunting to manage a lot of sites but the long term benefit cannot be overlooked. A solid consistent presence for your business on these sites is a lot like having a huge billboard set up in the busiest part of town. There are now a lot of tools available to automate and synchronize posts for you. There are software services that can report on the effectiveness of your efforts on social media sites. And if you really want to run a professional social media campaign, there are companies that can do this for you. People will find you and (assuming you make a good first impression) will want to find you on these sites. After they’ve become fans or followers, it then becomes a matter of funneling them to your actual website, sales page or brick & mortar location. Hopefully my list of the best social media sites for small business can help you with achieving that.