How to effectively promote your business on social networking web sites

Businesses have always craved to promote their business in places where their target audience gather. In the past this may have been limited to physical locations, such as public houses, sports stadiums, or shops. A web designer in Salisbury would have had to promote his/her services in the local paper, for example, and also rely on word of mouth. In the past decade this has now changed. People are frequently turning to the Internet to buy items, find information, and communicate with loved ones. Luckily for businesses, social networking has opened the door to free communication with their target audience, with web sites such as FaceBook and Twitter allowing businesses to leave short and informative messages for anyone to read.

Web sites and services to use

The social networking environment will no doubt change in the future, but currently (and for the foreseeable future) the most popular social networking web sites to promote your content on include:

• FaceBook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• LinkedIn

YouTube is also an effective medium for promoting video based content.

Posting frequency and style

The most popular social networking services are used for personal use. People use web sites such as FaceBook and MySpace to keep in contact with their friends, family, and work colleagues. People may follow celebrities or high profile politicians, but messages made by such people usually read in a similar way to businesses. This is the problem facing businesses that use social networking – how do we attract people to follow us, and create messages which connect with our audience?

Posting frequency is an important aspect of social networking which all businesses should take note of. Businesses which use social networking web sites need to strike a balance in their post frequency to ensure they remain connected with their target audience, but do not over do things which will annoy or irate them. Businesses which post too frequently will over crowd peoples feeds, blocking out updates made by their friends and family. Businesses which do not post frequently enough will lose the connection with their audience, as messages will drop off the radar of the followers. People who have followed a community centre in Salisbury to keep up to date with local meetings will not want to be bombarded with updates every half an hour, yet expect regular information.

People do prefer a more passive and casual posting style by businesses, which is no surprise given the social environment of web sites such as FaceBook and MySpace. The exception is for the large organisations, where people prefer a more professional dialog where the facts are posted in a short and informative manner.

Finding your business

Most social networking services offer poor navigation, so it may be difficult for the average web surfer to easily find you on the networks. Businesses should always use their business name for the account name, so the business name appears within the URL and on the page. This will aid people in finding the business, whether that is by searching on the networking web site itself, or through Google. Where possible, use the businesses colour scheme and logos for the social networking profile design (Twitter allows you to change the background image, and colour scheme).

More often than not a person will not actively seek out to add or follow a company; instead they have to be prompted to do so. This means having some form of link on the businesses web site, or email newsletter. Many high profile businesses now have “follow me on Twitter” links, as well as FaceBook and other social media icons for people to follow. The sports centre in Salisbury would find having a Twitter icon incorporated into their web site design beneficial so the centres users can easily remain connected with new events and news.

Social networking for your business

We are Webbed Feet UK Ltd, a team of professional web site designers based in Salisbury. We have a wealth of knowledge in promoting businesses online, as well as meeting all their web site design requirements. If you would like to discuss on the best plan to promote your business online please contact us.

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