There are many ways you may be promoting your company to prospective clients – leaflets, posters, perhaps a bit of SEO. The trouble is, this is exactly what everybody else is doing and before long it can become difficult to see the wood for the trees. It is a long held belief that the best form of advertising is through networking and refferals, and this is where Social Media can prove extremely useful.
When you attend an organised Networking event, you might meet half a dozen companies and some may even convert. That’s all well and good, but you’ve taken time out of your day and in many cases won’t end up getting much of a return for your trouble. With some carefully crafted posts on Facebook and Twitter however, you can suddenly put yourself infront of a few thousand people in the few minutes it takes for the kettle to boil when you fancy a coffee break.
Let’s say you lay block paving for instance. When you finish the job, you can take a quick photo and tweet it to the client. If they like the work you have done, they will probably retweet your photo, perhaps with a testimonial. Now everyone who follows your client can see what a good job you’ve done and that you are endorsed by somebody they trust. If one of those people needs some block paving done, they are now more likely to give you call. Maybe none of their followers need any paving done at the moment. That’s ok, you’ve still gained exposure and made very little effort above what you would have been doing anyway.
The same could be said of Facebook or LinkedIn, off the back of the work you do anyway, you can expand your network of contacts and promote your work to a much wider audience than would be otherwise possible. Your Social Media accounts can also get picked up by Google, particuarly if you put your business information on Google+, giving you greater exposure in search results.
Of course, this isn’t to say that other forms of marketing don’t have their place – an eye cathching poster can work wonders. What social media does is put you in front of a wider audience, who may then visit your website or pick up a brochure to find out more information.