In the marketing world, I always encourage clients to take full advantage of free resources when marketing their business. Typically, this has to do with social media marketing, but something to consider beyond the social media frenzy is your immediate circle of friends, acquaintances and associates. Before we get into the circle, let’s review some available main free resources to assist in marketing your business.
Facebook – With 360 million + users, Facebook is a great free resource to develop your social media strategy. They have some amazing tools to build business pages which have easy to use targeting tools to promote your business to the specified customer profiles. If you have a personal page on Facebook, you can start a business page and reach out to your circle of friends to further develop your business.
Instagram – Instagram is another free resource which can add impressions to your followers and assist in building your customer engagement. While this is more about visual impressions than engagement, it is definitely an opportunity to build a customer community with your brand.
Pinterest – Keep in mind with Pinterest, Pinterest demopgraphic is primarily 70% female. Make sure to drive you content toward the demographic. This is a good resource to develop your business with the female market. Some other interesting facts to consider about this social media platform, Pinterest users typically use Pinterest in the late evenings and on the weekends.
Linkedin – This is a business social and networking site. Most of the content is business driven. Keep in mind the content on this site will be more engaging if provided in a professional setting geared toward supervisors, managers, business owners, and business professionals. This is a great networking site to build your business and collaborate with other business minded professionals.
Blogging – Blogging is a great way to put out information as well as developing a following to build credentials for your business. The information needs to be helpful and specific to the readers. Through blogs you can gain engagement with your potential customers. Most websites offer free blogging websites you can set up to start developing your blog for your business.
Twitter – This is an immediate social platform which can reach a great audience for lively social debates and interaction. The uniqueness of this social media platform is everyone is accessible. From world leaders to the neighbors next door, everyone has the opportunity to participate in conversations via a limited response criteria set forth by Twitter. There are some great groups to get involved with which may be specific to your business and increasing your impressions to potential customers.
In all of the platforms mentioned above, the keys in using these social media tools are to remain consistent and see what works best. They are free resources which can increase awareness about your business and assist in building potential customers. There are plenty of additional free resources to reach clients. I highly encourage you to take some time and do some research of what platforms may work best for your business. Understanding what content works best with what platform is important to the practice of social engagement. Being aware of your customer profile can also guide you to the specific platform which may work best for your business. Please remember too, just because it is a free resource, doesn’t mean it may work best for your business model.
Now, back to your inner circle. Do not be afraid to reach out to family, friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and especially current customers from your inner networking circle to reach out to new people they may know. The current resources you have include recognizing who may be willing to assist you in developing your business. Simply by engaging these people and letting them know you would appreciate their assistance, is a great way to grow your business. In most cases, this word of mouth advertising is free. People are typically willing to assist you at the cost of engagement and gratitude. While developing your business community and engagement costs time and effort; monetarily, these are free resources to build your business.
Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this. I hope this inspires you to up your social media engagement and take advantage of free resources to grow your business. If you have any comments to add, I would love to see you share your thoughts below. If you have any questions about growing your business, I offer first timers free consultation.