Using Social Media to Help Launch Your Business

SO it’s almost time to launch your new business. You may think you’re ready but in a marketing sense, are you fully prepared? If you haven’t taken full advantage of the power of social media beforehand, the answer is probably not. In today’s marketing climate, an increasingly large number of marketers are realizing the importance of incorporating social media into their mix.

Studies have shown that social sites such as Facebook and Twitter are very powerful tools for not only generating leads but also acquiring new customers. But, if you wait until your business is already launched, you’re wasting a lot of valuable time. The best time to lay the groundwork of your social marketing strategy is in the preparation stage—before your business is completely off the ground. How do you do this? Here are some tips to help get your business off to a great start:

Decide which sites to target most heavily – Social networking is a multi-layered beast. You can, and probably should, set up accounts on many or even most of the large number of social sites out there. But depending on your business, some will be more valuable to you than others. For example, if performance art is your business, you might find YouTube more useful than LinkedIn. But in order to know this, it’s important that you learn what sites are out there and what they can do for you.

Some examples: Facebook is great for socializing; Twitter is sort of a real-time micro-blogging site; Pinterest is an online bulletin board for images; YouTube is great for creating and sharing videos; LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network; Technorati is a blogging directory slanted towards technology. And these only a few—there are many more and the number is growing all the time.

Manage your social networking – Setting up accounts on a dozen social networks is the easy part. The harder part is using your accounts wisely. Lack of time will be your biggest enemy. So you will need to visit each site on a regular basis.