How to Use Social Media to Create a Buzz for Your Biz

Nowadays, if you want to promote your business, advertise your latest sales campaign, attract new customers, and boost your bottom line, the name of the game is social media. If you haven't yet learned how to leverage your operation using social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Google+, you are missing out on a massive opportunity for exposure and could be losing the edge in a competitive 21st century market.

To help you discover what social media can do for your sales numbers and how the technology can revolutionize your business, here is a mini primer on the benefits of social media and why it is considered a game changer in the realm of small business.

Go Where Your Customers Are

No matter what goods or services you are selling or how great your sales pitch is, you can't get off the ground without having who to pitch it to, without building a loyal customer base, and without solidifying that all-important customer relationship. To achieve this you need to know where your target prospects are, and nowadays you will find the vast majority of them chatting on Facebook, following their Twitter handle, spinning a conversation on LinkedIn, updating their Pinterest account, or checking out the latest postings on YouTube.

As a salesperson, your first step is to create an online presence and begin interacting with your prospects. To learn more about their interests and buying preferences, use special software designed to manage social prospect information and monitor consumption patterns. This will help you understand and service your customers' wants and needs, which is the key to any CRM platform and the basis of forming long-lasing customer relationships.

Turning Browsers into Buyers

Here are some tips from the experts on how to effectively use social media to capture consumer attention, to increase traffic to your website, and to turn browsers into buyers:

1. Hundreds of millions of potential customers of all ages log onto social media sites every day, making social media an international phenomenon. With the right social media presence, you can give your business and website the boost it needs on all the major search engines.
2. Establishing a social media following does wonders for brand name recognition, allowing users to follow and 'like' your products or services and recommend them to their family and friends.
3. Spend time researching which social media platforms are right for your business, checking out the benefits each has to offer and where it's worthwhile to invest your time. In addition to the most well-known sites (Twitter, Facebook), learn how salespeople are using social network platforms such as Foursquare, Tumblr, Quora, Flickr, MySpace, and more.
4. Use social media to entice customers by advertising sales promotions, discount coupons, sneak peaks and pics of new products and services, online contests, and more. You can also reward customer loyalty and draw in scores of followers by offering incentives such as a free treat for 'liking' your company or for 'whispering' a password.
5. Add value and increase your credibility by engaging with customers directly, responding to questions about your industry, blogging, providing valuable content in the area of your expertise, participating in forums, and sharing the latest industry news.
6. Measure the success of your social media account by tracking results such as search engine rankings, the number of online/press mentions, what people are saying about you, site traffic, and direct sales

The bottom line is that today's successful businesses use social media to boost their bottom line. Social media sites allows you to access and connect with new and existing customers, to spread the word about your products and services, to engage in effective ways to keep customers coming back for more, and to ultimately increase profits exponentially.

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In addition to social media training, savvy salespeople cash in on the benefits of sales apps for iPad and Web, making full use of 21st century business software and digital tools to improve their sales techniques and to compete in today's technology based market.