Harnessing the Power of Social Media for Online Business

4 Powerful Ways to Use Social Media for Business

The most powerful marketing tool for your online business is social networking. It's not a TV commercial or a newspaper ad. It's Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, or Instagram. For a small cost, you can put your product or idea in front of literally billions of eyes. Using social media for business will boost visibility, and bring more customers in.

Here are four simple steps to use social media toward growing your web-based business today:

1. Go where your potential customers are. When you think about how many people see a billboard versus how expensive it was to rent, social media makes sense AND cents. YouTube has a billion active viewers every month. Facebook has 1.5 billion users. Twitter and Instagram have around 300 million active users. And don't count out Pinterest, LinkedIn or something more recent like Periscope. The point is to know where your target audience hangs out and begin growing a presence on that network. Don't worry about using everything; just use networks that attract your potential customer.

2. Learn what you can; outsource the rest. Virtual assistants and social media techs are all over the place. It could be a great learning experience to try social media marketing on your own, but remember that there is outside help available too. There are great people who won't cost an arm and a leg to hire for a few hours every week. They may make the difference between your business standing out or slinking back into the crowded World Wide Web.

3. Use tools to manage your accounts. Before you outsource every step of the process, be aware that there are some terrific tools like Buffer and CoSchedule that can help you schedule posts or updates on social media. Instead of sending out tweets every two hours manually, wasting a huge amount of your valuable time, you can schedule them all at once.

4. Follow the experts. Most of all, find people who are doing social networking well and follow them. Odds are they have created tons of free content specifically geared toward helping your web-based business thrive on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. People like Amy Porterfield or Gary Vaynerchuk have hundreds of thousands of followers, and they truly enjoy teaching others their secrets. Not all of the material is free, but it is tremendously helpful. If you're looking for more followers, become one yourself.