Whether you are promoting a personal blog or a Fortune 500 company, social media marketing has become a crucial part of connecting with your audience. If you are new to the process, we can help. After over 15 years in business, Web Host Pro has been marketed in just about every funnel known to Internet mankind. After trial and error and everything in between, we have come up with the main social networks and how to get some social engagement. Keep in mind, social marketing is an ongoing, evolving process, so it’s important to re-think everything every couple of years or so to make sure you are on track.
The top social networks
- Facebook – Facebook is still the giant of social networks, and adding a business page for your website is the most important social networking tool to use and keep updated.
- YouTube – YouTube is set to surpass Google search “their main service” in Internet searches in 2017. This means a ton of traffic will be up for grabs if you stay active and relevant. The trick is that you have to actually make videos. With cell phone video quality getting better and better, we suggest using one to make the videos. You should mostly add videos that help people in your industry or look into your industry.
- Twitter (now X) – Twitter is a popular, fast updated website on the Internet. Some companies tweet 10–20 times a day. Don’t worry, though, tweeting a lot less will still be fine.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the biggest business social network and has done a great job keeping it business-focused. We suggest only using them if you have a business-related website.
- Instagram – Instagram was bought by Facebook’s future reading geniuses, and for good reason. It is growing faster and faster and becoming a hub for other social networks. You can now connect your Facebook business page and Twitter with Instagram and update all of them at the same time from your phone.
- TikTok – TikTok is a popular social media platform known for its short-form video content, where users can create, share, and discover videos ranging from a few seconds to three minutes in length. It was launched internationally in September 2017 by the Chinese company ByteDance. TikTok has quickly grown into one of the world’s most downloaded apps, appealing to a broad audience across various age groups, particularly among teenagers and young adults.
What to add to the social networks.
- Facebook – First make sure your background image is high quality on your business page. Real pictures are normally the best if they are really good-looking. Otherwise, have a graphic made that has your website URL, phone, and email. We suggest using Instagram to keep this updated with current photos, videos, and text. We’ll talk more about Instagram below.
- YouTube – YouTube loves helpful videos. People search for how-to-do stuff videos in the millions a day. Whatever your website or blog is, just make helpful videos about what you do every week or so. Your cell phone is a perfect tool for this. Tip: Make sure to do videos in wide format with the highest quality.
- Twitter – Twitter can also be updated via Instagram. We suggest the majority of your posts be done from there. Keep in mind, Twitter has a text limit of about 160 characters, so some posts will be cut off if they are long.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn requires you to log in to the actual website to make posts. We suggest adding any business-related quotes, blogs, images, and videos there as often as possible. It’s not updated nearly as much as the other social networks listed here.
- Instagram – Because Instagram is the hub for your Twitter and Facebook, this will be your main focus. You will need to be posting every couple of days as a minimum to keep engagement and get new followers. Here are the four main things to add to Instagram 1. You can post a quality, relevant quote a couple of times a week. Feel free to get these from other sources and re-post them. Making your own is always better if they are good, 2. Take photos, lots of photos, photos of your business, people involved, products, signs, just keep taking photos. 3. Post pictures of events or other places related to your business 4. Make short helpful videos on your cell phone.
This should be enough to get your social marketing campaign started. If you don’t have time or don’t want to learn how to do this, consider hiring a social marketing service. Most professional services charge about $50 to $500 a month to keep all of your social networks updated regularly.