Marketing a Small Business Through Social Media Part II

In part one we talked about the use of social media types like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. But these are all incredibly informal means of marketing, and are often unsuccessful for those who are working as consultant, freelancers, or want to market themselves as a service rather than a whole business.

There are several ways to do this, but your two best bets will be professional networking sites, professional directories, personal (interactive) websites, and blogs. Each one of these gives you an easy way to present yourself to potential clients, customers, and even other employers or investors. Because the formats are specifically created to provide something serious and well made it will give you a great platform for marketing your most important asset: yourself.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is probably the most well known and frequently used social networking site for professionals. Designed to allow you to create a full resume and profile, you can also provide links to samples, connect with people you have worked for or with, show off past work experience, and even get recommendations and references to show directly on your profile.

But what makes LinkedIn so unique is the ease in which it can be used by people looking for your services. You can be sought out by more than a name and location. You can also be searched by past work experience, expertise, and what it is you or your business offers. You can also automatically add contacts from your work email that have LinkedIn profiles themselves, which makes it simple to keep in touch with anyone you have worked for or with in the past.

Blogs

Everyone seems to have a blog these days, and with good reason. They are affordable (and sometimes profitable), easy to maintain and update, and there are plenty of fantastic options for s provider. If you are thinking of creating a professional or business blog you have two options that have exceeded all others in popularity: Blogspot and WordPress.

Not only are these great for using with fewer glitches and plenty of options, but they are both easily picked up by search engines. Google has recently expanded their capabilities in this regard, giving priority to most blogs in results. But to increase these results further you should purchase a direct URL that incorporates your name, or the name of your business. This is just basic SEO know-how.

Interactive Websites

As per the digital age, one of the main things that a customer looks for these days is a company website. But just laying a small bit of information isn’t enough anymore, and not being tech-savvy can lose your customers rather quickly. Having a website with plenty of interaction and information, even a shopping cart and checkout system is a great idea.

Some other tips for having a website is providing plenty of payment options for people to use. More and more, customers are turning to payment services such as PayPal to help protect their identity online. With credit card numbers being more easily stolen it is no surprise that some will refuse to use one. Having an alternative that protects all financial information is a great idea. Be careful not to provide too many options though, researches showed that too many options will just confuse people and make them more likely to abandon the checkout process.