make-money-online

Why Does Your Online Business Need Social Media?

Online marketing is a continually evolving space and social media is becoming a more prominent part of the majority of online marketing strategies to increase business growth.

There are a number of reasons to increase YOUR use of social media to engage and reach potential customers and I will cover a number of them over the next few posts.

1: Reach

Why does a business that is using social media marketing spend so much time planning, posting, testing, and perfecting their social media strategy? One word; reach! Look at these statistics:

• There are 3 billion active Internet users and over 2.1 billion of them have social media accounts.
• YouTube has over 1 billion users. Did you know that this is more than a 1/3 of all web users?! Just think about the hundreds of millions of hours available on YouTube and how these generate billions of views.
• Facebook has nearly 1.4 billion users, and that is 47% of all Internet users. Do you know how many Likes are generated on a daily basis? 4.5 billion! And did you also know that nearly 75% of Facebook’s revenue comes from mobile advertising. 936 million Facebook users login in at least once per day and over 50% of marketers found a customer on Facebook in 2013.
• Twitter has 316 million monthly active users that generate over 500 million tweets every day!
• Google+ has 363 million users that hit the +1 button over 5 billion times per day.
• Pinterest has 100 million users and the majority of them are women (85%). 47% of Pinterest users purchase a product based on pins, with the average sale being $58.95. Some other Pinterest figures; 67% of pinned content is linked a business site and 82% of Pinterest users would rather follow a brand than a celebrity.

So are you impressed by these statistics?

These stats are just one reason to use social media marketing in your business and they really do highlight the reach that social media can give to your business, whether it is online or brick and mortar. In the next post we will look at relationships…

18 Ways To Build Your Brand And Authority In Your Niche

How You Can Help Your Customers Get To Know You

If you are trying to build a personal brand in order to build trust and authority in your niche, then one way to achieve this is to get your visitors to feel as if they know you. By doing this, they will be far more likely to trust your future posts and far more likely to want to listen to you when you suggest buying a product.

Think about it: who would you be more likely to listen to your recommendations to purchase a product; a friend or an advert? Obviously it is the friend and that’s because we feel as though we know them and can trust their judgement. If you can be seen in the same way by your audience, then your suggestions will carry much more clout and your offers will be much more persuasive.

So how do you go about establishing this level of trust? Well here are a few options…

Write in the First Person

Try to write some of your messages in the first person. This is rather different to what you may have learned in school. Most schools will teach that writing in the third person is preferable for business as it sounds more professional and authoritative but the point here is that you want your readers to feel as though they know you and as though you are personally recommending something. And you can do this by writing in the first person. Use ‘I’s and ‘Me’s and generally write as though you’re talking to that person; write as if you are writing a letter to your mother!

Be honest

And don’t just write in first person, make sure you’re being honest too. If you have concerns about a product, let your audience know; believe me, they will appreciate it. Not only does this fill in your personality but it also shows that you’re willing to ‘tell it how it is’ and boosts your integrity. The same goes for talking about issues in your personal life which has the added bonus of making you more relatable; you can be seen as a fellow traveler along the journey.

Use images or photos

Including images of yourself is a great way to help people feel as though they’re getting to know you. Remember that a picture paints a thousand words and it is always nice to put a face to a name. If you’re writing about the benefits of a certain exercise, then why not include an image of you performing that exercise? This is also a good way to get graphics for your site without paying the high prices charged for stock images.

Go on camera and shoot a video!

Why not go one step further and put yourself on camera?! If you are confident enough, then going on YouTube is a great way to reach a larger audience in a way that will leave a more lasting impression. Video is infinitely more engaging than text so if you have the confidence, go for it!