The importance of having a strong online presence is growing higher every day. No matter what business you are in, whether you are selling physical products, digital goods, or online services, it is imperative that you do your best to establish your store's online presence in order to promote your business the best way possible on the web.
Ever since the invention of smartphones and tablets, the number of people that go online is rapidly rising, as well as the amount of time spent online. Some predict that, in the not so distant future, conventional shopping will be a thing of the past, since everyone will shop from the comfort of their home, or while they are simply on the go via their mobile connected devices.
Now, when talking about online stores, there are tons of things that one should take into consideration, some of which are:
-It should be designed in accordance to the latest trends. -It should be well developed and optimized for search engines. -Hosting is also an issue – without a good host, your website will go down at some point and this is something that must not happen. -It is important to note that this is not a full list, but it is enough to start with. And now, we move to the topic at hand – Social media.
The number of accounts on each social network rises by the minute and people are getting more and more involved. So, in order to spread the word about your site, you should make sure that you utilize a social media campaign. In the following text, we will go through major social networks and discuss how they can help you spread your business globally.
Facebook:
This is currently the most popular social media website. It has over 1,000,000,000 unique visitors each month, which is very impressive. You can work on your own, personal profile and on your co-workers’ profiles as well, and on top of that, you can create a page, which will represent your online shop. Facebook has a system, where you pay a certain fee (of your choosing) and Facebook will advertise you as a suggested page, resulting in a higher traffic rate to your business's Facebook page.
However, you should know that when you have a community, you should nurture it – meaning, you should post relevant texts and relevant links, comment on your client’s or potential client’s comments and keep the community alive.
Twitter:
Twitter is the second most popular network with around 540,000,000 unique users. This social network has a limit. You can post a body of text which consists of up to 140 characters. Therefore, this network is excellent for presenting updates, various giveaways, discounts, new items and so on. However, you should know that Twitter is excellent, but only when you have an established community of customers who are following you. Therefore, at least in this writer’s opinion, Twitter is not the best option to start with, but it is a great outlet to expand an already established social presence.
Google +:
Google+, has something over 550,000,000 users. Google+ is a social network that has rules. For instance, you have to present yourself with your real name and surname and it is imperative that your real face is on your profile picture. Since it is connected to Google, this social network can work on boosting your site’s rankings. If you write relevant articles related to your niche and post them on relevant blogs where you will put your signature and a link to your G+ profile, Google will reward you with verified authorship, which is a slam dunk for business branding opportunities you will have in the future.
LinkedIn:
This is a social media website dedicated strictly to businesses and professional networking. You can use it to recruit people, find other jobs, make deals and create partnerships. It is one of the fastest rising social networks out there and there have been countless testimonials, where people have stated that they have found jobs, employees and discovered many fruitful things related to their business on this network alone. Therefore, this one is a must.
Pinterest:
Pinterest is an image sharing social network with a pin-board style. By latest statistics, it counts over 79,000,000 users. It is designed for users who find interest in a plethora of topics and shared them in theme-based image collections. This is probably the most successful network you can use for your company branding. However, unlike any other social network, Pinterest requires a lot more engagement and regular maintenance. For example, a regular user makes over 3,500 pins a day.
Another fact to keep in mind is that Pinterest actually generates four times greater revenue per click than both Facebook and Twitter.
All in all, when you go through this text, you will realize that it is best that you spread your business to as much social media websites as possible. Of course, the list above is not a full list of social networks – there are many, many more. To end, all that can be said is this – if you want to be successful, you should strive to spread everywhere mainly where your targeted customer spends the majority of their time online.
Image courtesy of Pixabay
