Benham Publishing Businesss Magazines February 2014 | Page 10

MembershipBenefits

5

Five ways to use
social media for
your business

Social media is a growing trend amongst businesses. The opportunity to be online cannot be missed in
this technological age. Social media is a great, FREE marketing tool, saving you money from your
marketing budget and giving your business access to a whole world of new customers and suppliers.
Even better, it’s accessible from your desktop PC and mobile devices.

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3.

Grow your online presence

Increase your SEO

Interact with us

Social media increases the awareness of your
company and providing useful links to your site
will increase visits to your website. In turn this
maximises your chances of being found in search
engines such as Google. Remember the 80/20
rule: 80% of your social media posts should be
informative with 20% allowed for promotional
posts. If your messages are too sales focused
you’re likely to turn users off.

And finally, once your social media sites are
growing, interact with your local Chamber.
Members benefit from our interactivity across
social media. Tag us and we’ll like and re-tweet
your posts. If you attend our events take a look at
our YouTube channel and Facebook page; you
may be included in our videos and images! And
get involved and use #JoinYourChamber and
#WellConnected to showcase how we’ve
helped your business on Twitter. Not yet a
member? See how we’ve helped businesses like
yours through our YouTube channel.

You may have a website but how do your potential
customers know about it? Use social media to
spread the word about your products and services
online and engage and interact with clients about
your business to drive interest and visitors to your
website. Start a blog, tweet at events, create a
hashtag, upload videos to YouTube and post
photos to Facebook to engage your audience and
get them interacting with you.

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2.
Get a helping hand
Social media management tools such as Hootsuite
and TweetDeck offer a helping hand once your
social media channels have grown. They allow
you to manage and schedule your social media
activity, permitting a 24/7 presence online. This
allows you to have a presence on all channels but
prioritise where you need to be ‘live’ as this
doesn’t replace engagement with Tweeters as it
happens.

10

There’s a channel for every
business
These days there’s more than just MySpace and
Bebo – there’s a great range of social media sites
to suite any businesses needs. YouTube, Facebook
and Pinterest showcase your business activities in a
visual way and the Chamber uses these channels
to publicise a wide range of events and
testimonials from happy members. Twitter allows
for immediate interaction with ‘followers’, a
snapshot of your business in just 140 characters,
which can be a useful tool for ‘live’ updates.

CLOSEUP Winter 2013

5.

@MidYorksChamber

Mid Yor