Becoming an affiliate marketer is an awesome way to earn extra money. It can soon become your full-time income if you work hard enough.
If you are here, you are probably thinking about setting up your affiliate marketing business. This post is only going to deal with the website itself. Before you do this step, it is important that you have your strategy in place. This includes:
Select your niche. This might be kites or knitting or fashion
Doing your product and services research so you know what to market
Your Marketing Strategy. SEO or ADs or SOCIAL, or some combination
Domain name
Once you have decided this, you can find out how to set up an affiliate marketing website. These are the options you have.
The almost free route
If you have no money you have to learn how to make an affiliate website for free. You need to get googling. But basically, you are going to:
You have some money. Get a professional to build the site for you. This will give you time to work on the business. You can focus all your time on the money-making part. Product research, marketing material, and possibly Paid Ads.
Getting your creativity on and building an affiliate site can be mentally and financially rewarding.
You’ll learn a lot about your selected niche, business in general, and how online business works. You’ll find there are so many aspects, that once you start making money, you’ll pay someone else to do the parts that are hard.
One of the biggest challenges for anyone starting any business is the cost of starting. Many people don’t have access to the large amounts of capital required to start building a business. And this is a major limiting factor for many people. Today I will be delving into one business model that requires little to no start-up capital! Yes, it’s true there is a way to start a business with zero money, it is called affiliate marketing and you can even get started today!
Here is what I will be covering today:
Myths about Affiliate Marketing
Building a business without Boundaries
Why should you find a niche?
Why you need a blog?
Use Social Media to spread the word
Grow Your Email List
Be Consistent!
Let’s dispense with the Myths First
Affiliate Marketing, like any real business, will not make you heaps of money from day one, no business will! It is not a quick route to making money. It is a great way to start building an income for yourself, through your own efforts. If you are working and want an additional income stream, affiliate marketing can be a way to build a steady income that can grow over time.
As an affiliate, you will be promoting products and services that will earn you a commission from every person that buys that product. Instead of physically selling any products you are acting as a referral partner, and earn money for referring a customer. So if you look at it from a long-term point of view and invest now, down the line it will yield higher and higher returns as you grow your business.
A Business without Boundaries
One of the great benefits of an Affiliate Marketing business is the fact that you can run it from anywhere! It’s also not like a normal business where you need to be available during business hours. You also don’t need to only sell to people in your country, you can market your products anywhere in the world.
This means if you ever built a strong enough business that makes you enough money, you could live anywhere in the world. So you could truly be a digital nomad and live and work where you want. You could even travel while you work, the choice would be yours.
Why should you choose a niche?
One of the challenges facing anyone starting out is what to sell! There are just countless products and services in innumerable industries that you could sell. The problem is not if there are opportunities to sell, the problem is what opportunities will you focus on? Instead of trying to cover too many bases, focus on one niche or solve one problem.
This will help you be more focused on your marketing efforts! And this is a good thing. If you sell too many different unrelated products, it will severely undermine your content. This is also not ideal from a search engine point of view. So think carefully about what you want to sell by asking these questions:
Where are my interests?
What am I knowledgeable about?
What do I love talking about?
What would I love to learn about everyday?
What products or services do I use everyday?
What products and services am I knowledge about?
Dig into your strengths, passions, experience, and knowledge to find areas that will be more natural for you, as this will greatly help you when creating content. There are many tools online that can help you research the demand for online products and services. Doing a Google search can direct you to some free tools for viewing real data about your niche.
No! But although you don’t need a blog to get started, I would highly suggest setting up a basic blog for your business. Some affiliate programs will require you to have a website, so it depends on the affiliate network. You can share information about the products you are selling, and create a resource with your audience.
A blog gives you total ownership over your content. You are in control and can use it to centralize all your content in one place. Even if you decide to move from one social media platform to another, your content will still be accessible on your website. You can also use your web content to repurpose on social media platforms. This can help you maintain consistency, and help you to build traffic to your website.
Many hosting companies have basic webpage builders to help you set up a basic website, that won’t even cost you any more than your monthly hosting fee. Ask them to find out more!
Social media is a powerful content distribution platform to share your content and grow an audience. Your content can educate your audience about what you are promoting and create exposure for your affiliate products. Choose a social media platform where your target audience is to increase the success of your content. The better you connect with your target audience the more effective your affiliate promoting will be.
People will be more inclined to follow a link from a trustworthy source than someone that hasn’t taken the time to build a strong following. Social media can be powerful leverage for driving traffic, and it is free, so take the time to learn how to use it wisely and it could pay back dividends.
A great way to build a good affiliate business is to build an email list! If your customers have subscribed to your newsletter, they have already shown interest in your products and services. Now you can use this list to regularly send out information that can inform, educate and promote your products. But remember, put your customer first and don’t just cold pitch every email or you could land up with people unsubscribing faster than they join!
Be consistent
A mistake many affiliate marketers make is they fail to be consistent! To achieve success you need to be consistent, and that means working at your business every week. Create informative content for your readers weekly and share that on social media! Make it part of your email newsletter and keep your readers interested and your business will grow.
Lets Summarize, an Affiliate Business:
Can make you money if you take the time to grow it!
Can be run from anywhere in the world.
Can be run anytime of the day.
Should be based on your interests, experience, or knowledge.
Can be run with or without a website.
Can be run using Social Media as a primary platform.
Can be promoted through an Email Newsletter.
Can be successful by being consistent!
So, what are you waiting for?
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
Many people struggle to get their business ideas off the ground. It often takes longer than they think to develop their products or services. And this stops many from even launching into cyberspace. But that is changing. More and more entrepreneurs are opting to build their businesses in public. Yes. Even before they have products or services to sell.
This might seem risky or foolish. But there is a method to their madness. They may start by sharing how they’ve been researching their ideas. What they have learned. They may share what other companies are doing, and how they intend to improve the issues of those products or services.
And social media is where many entrepreneurs are talking about what they are building. Sharing their journey of discovery and development with the public eye. Many entrepreneurs actively engage with the public and get feedback, which can be a fantastic way to build an even better business.
Let’s take a look at why building a business in public can help facilitate opportunities for your startup.
Transparency Builds Trust
One of the biggest challenges in building a new venture is establishing trust with prospective customers. People need to be able to trust that you will deliver what you say you will. At the beginning of your business journey, you will start with zero customers. And that means you need to be able to attract interest in your offering. But how do you build trust?
Building in public is a way to establish trust. As people see you online, you will start to build up credibility as you interact with your audience. People will feel like they are a part of your journey, and will relate more than if you simply tried to promote what you were selling.
As you share more of your journey in public and people can see you are consistent, willing to listen, and give feedback, you will establish a strong sense of trust.
Establishing a strong brand is pivotal to building a successful business online or offline. And it ties in with the previous point on trust. Your brand presence can build a public image that can be a powerful asset to attract customers.
Brand versus Business
Your business is the behind-the-scenes mechanics of your venture. It’s the systems you use, the administrative side, the inner workings of your services, and operations.
Your brand is the public persona or image that people see of your business. It’s how you represent yourself in public, both verbally and visually. It’s the way you market your business, or how you talk to your customers. It’s fundamentally the outward character of your business.
And this is where building in public can help you build a strong brand, whether personal or organizational. The same benefits apply. The voice and attitude of your communication will establish a certain character for your brand. And this will attract a certain type of audience.
For example, if you are developing a service for corporate professionals, considering your audience can help guide how you represent your brand both verbally or visually. Appealing to one group might repel other groups of people. If some people don’t connect with your brand that’s okay. You are not trying to help everyone. If you attract the right audience, that is ultimately what matters.
And that’s where your brand can be a magnet. It can attract the right type of audience that you want to connect with online.
Attracts Your Audience
A problem many entrepreneurs have is selling their products or services once they are ready to launch. This can take a lot of time, effort and even money to do. And if you like many entrepreneurs, you don’t want to be starting from scratch when you are ready to launch your offering.
This is where building your audience before you launch can be invaluable. The advantage to this is that you are building anticipation for your launch. People are getting to hear about how you are building your venture. If you do it right, by the time you do launch your offering, you will have already created awareness and interest. And that means that you will not have to start from nothing.
Better Product-Market Fit
You might have an idea that you think is fantastic. You feel it’s so good it cannot fail. But what does the market think? Does your offering meet the demands and needs of your target audience? This is a challenge for any startup. You just don’t know how people will react to your idea.
And this is where building in public can come into its own. You can share your product or service offering and get feedback. Maybe people offer you constructive criticisms or ideas to make it even better. They might even be able to help you hone your product to meet the demands of your target audience.
If you want to succeed you need to listen to your audience, your prospective customers are a goldmine of information. Don’t dismiss them. You ultimately build something for them. And the more the public sees your openness to embrace feedback the more confidence people will have in you.
One advantage of building in public is that you can test your offering with a select number of customers. By gauging the feedback from your customers you can prepare for your launch. And ensure you iron out any issues before you finally go live.
By launching too soon, you might disappoint customers and lose valuable trust that you’ve taken time to develop. So rather take your time to gauge feedback from users and ensure it meets a certain level of quality before you make it available.
Conclusion
If you are considering building a new venture you might want to consider starting even before you have a clear direction. Sharing your journey can greatly benefit your progress and brand awareness.
Before you even have a clear vision of your business, you can start sharing about the area of interest and get feedback on ideas to gauge what people want. This can guide you toward a clearer idea for your offering, it’s really a win-win…
And all at the same time you will be building your online presence, establishing your authority, and growing your audience. This means when you are ready to finally launch your venture, you will have the audience you need to sell your product or service.
So… are you ready to start your journey in public yet?
One of the challenges of affiliate marketing is building opportunities to generate leads for the products you promoting. Everyone today has an email address. And this means if you can collect someone’s email address you can send them news and information about what you selling. Email Marketing has been around for a long time and has matured over the years. And it is in no way losing its importance in marketing.
Why Email Marketing is Effective?
One of the reasons why marketers, bloggers, and affiliate marketers use email is because of its accessibility. Once you have someone’s email address you can communicate with them directly. You don’t need to be on social media or any platform to send an email.
It’s straight to their inbox!
Email marketing essentially gives you flexibility and control of how you can market to your subscribers, it has many benefits over other channels of communication.
Here are five reasons why email is an effective marketing channel:
Is a personalized marketing channel which can build trust.
This helps build lasting relationships through one on one communication.
You can measure its effectiveness through various metrics.
You can test the effectiveness of different campaigns to refine your strategy.
The cost of most email marketing platforms is reasonable compared with advertising.
You have full ownership over it unlike social media channels.
Email Marketing Platforms
One of the ways to simplify the process the creating and distributing email content is by using an email marketing service.
They offer you a one-stop platform that gives you the ability to:
Collect email addresses in a secure way
Create professional looking emails in a user-friendly interface
Manage your subscribers
Segment your audience for greater personalization
Track your email open rates, and other metrics
Automate welcome messages and other types of email communication.
Here is a list of popular email subscriber services:
Each one has its strength and weaknesses, but most offer similar features for varying prices. Most offer free trials or plans that allow you to get started and get a feel for the product.
One of the first places you should collect email addresses is on your website. You will either use a plug-in or embed code to create a subscription box on your website.
Once you have a subscriber box you can begin to collect email addresses from visitors. You could also share your subscription link on social media for your follower to easily sign up for your newsletter.
The key is to advertise your newsletter and make people aware where ever possible to increase your chances of attracting new subscribers.
Keep Your Subscribers Engaged
If you want to maintain loyal subscribers, you need to create interesting content. You want to provide value to your subscribers that will have them looking forward to each email. It’s your chance to share information and insights that your audience wants or you going to lose their interest.
You can even encourage your subscribers to share their ideas or ask questions that you can use as content for your future newsletters.
Conclusion
Email is a powerful marketing channel, and it’s not dead. It’s undoubtedly here to stay. And that means if you building an affiliate business or any other venture, email marketing can be an effective way to market to your ideal customer.
Start small, and build it slowly.
A monthly newsletter is perfect to get started!
Learn How to Earn Income Online
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
Technology has become integrated into our lives and has had a massive impact on our relationships. Today we can be having a conversation with people physically yet be digitally focused on another conversation on our phone. This is the twenty-first century connected world. Our family, friends, and co-workers have devices and often are not totally present when we talk to them, simply because something else has their attention. It is something that has definitely escalated during the pandemic as people found themselves isolated and not able to socialize.
There is nothing wrong with reading a blog, browsing through social media, or even chatting to a friend online. But it does become a problem when we cant balance our digital lives with our physical lives. This is the point where we need to take back control.
Notifications, the Concentration killer.
One of the biggest problems with having mobile devices is the constant notifications that distract our attention. We naturally want to respond to them. As if they calling us to take action. It’s human nature. Who is that? What if it’s urgent? And we feel the need to check every beep and ping that pops up on our phones.
In your work environment, it can be difficult to maintain focus when you have multiple apps screaming for your attention. One way is to go into your app setting and disable notifications for certain apps like social media. It’s one way to help you focus more. And if you have a moment you can simply open your app to see if there are any notifications or messages that you need to attend to.
Whether you use social media for personal or business purposes, it can be addictive! You constantly feel the need to see what’s going on in the world. Or what are our friends posting? And this can waste a lot of your productive time especially while you at work. One way to gain control of the way you use social media is to set fixed times for checking and responding to messages or posts.
This is far better than constantly being distracted by it throughout the day. It will also help you avoid wasting productive time on social media. In fact, setting time aside for just social media will help you be more productive with your time online. It’s all about focus and more focus means more productivity.
Know When to Put Your Phone Away
Smartphones dominate our lives. Everyone has one and we see people around us on them all day. But there is the point where you need to just put them away and focus on the people around you? Having your phone in your hand all the time, around family or friends can send the signal you are not a hundred percent available. So why not put your phone away in your cupboard and ignore it while you spending quality time with people that matter. It will in the long run add more value to your life and show the people in your life you present and care.
It may seem like a small thing, even silly, but breaking away from your phone can make a huge difference to your productivity both personally and professionally.
Why not give it a try?
Maybe you’ll be surprised at just how much better you feel!
The internet has without a doubt become an indispensable part of our daily lives. Searching and sharing content is happening at scale from individuals to large corporates. Social media buzzes and pulses all day long with content that is posted and shared more times than we can fathom.
So the question is… is content really king?
Here are nine reasons that content marketing could very well be worth investing in:
The more you create and share content online the more people will see your content? It’s the medium through which your audience can connect with you. In fact the more you post, the more likely they will be to engage and interact with your content.
If you consistently create content on social media platforms or your blog you will be building a foundation that will build a strong online presence. And that means more opportunities for you in the long run.
Before you can sell your products and services you need to establish trust with your audience. This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not a once of activity. Trust is built over time, and this is why creating content should be a long-term strategy to build your business. To build trust you need to be consistent, publish good quality content, engage with your audience, and add value on some level.
People are more likely to trust people or brands that have a consistent and established online presence. It’s a signal to people you are in this for the long run.
Content Can Help Build Your Brand
Content can be used to establish your brand both visually and verbally. By applying consistent design to your content you can help readers immediately recognize you by your visual signature. This can extend to the voice of your content. Is it funny, witty, edgy, or professional?
Your content gives your brand an opportunity to establish your voice and speak the language of your audience. It’s this brand that builds fans, followers, and customers. It establishes a clear way of communicating with your audience that will help you connect with the right people. The stronger this connection, the more likely they will be to support you, follow up and buy from you.
Your brand is your personality and the way you communicate. It’s that energy you express through your content. It can act as a magnet, if you use it well, you will certainly grow your audience.
Content Educates Your Audience
One of the most important functions that content serves is educating prospects. It offers you a medium to share information that is relevant to your reader. You can organize this information in ways that can help your audience to understand what you sell and do.
People are searching for answers every day. They are searching right now on Google for answers to questions they have. This is an opportunity to create content that your audience may be looking to find.
In fact, using keyword research tools can give you more detailed insights into what exactly people are searching for in Google. And this can help you figure out how best to structure your content.
Content Helps Your Audience
Probably the most valuable content is the content that helps your audience solve a problem. So when you start creating content you should be asking yourself the following:
How does this content help my audience?
Is it adding any value?
Why would my audience want to read this?
Does this help my audience achieve anything?
Would people find this interesting?
At the end of the day, you are sharing content to attract people to your social media page or website. If you understand what content will serve your audience best, you will be better able to grow your following.
Content Can Be Repurposed
One thing you can do with your content is to repurpose it. And that means taking content from one medium to another. For example, a collection of blog posts could become an ebook. This ebook could become a lead magnet on your website.
You could create a video from the content you posted on your blog and share that on social media. The point is that your content can be used in different ways and doesn’t have to stay a blog post or a video. It can be used to create even more content in different mediums.
Content builds community
When creating content on social media you will find people start to follow you. As these few people grow from a few hundred to thousands, you begin to have a stronger and stronger influence. This means you have the ability to leverage more and more opportunities as you communicate with more people.
Your following can then be monetized through offering your products, services or promoting affiliate products.
Content Improves Your SEO
By regularly posting content on your blog you will be improving your SEO. Google rewards websites that post regular content as it sees your site as active. If you want more traffic, post more content! Make sure it’s good quality and that people will find it interesting. You are primarily writing for your audience, but if you ensure your content is SEO friendly it will help rank your content better.
If you want to make money from your content, you can, by using affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is really promoting products and services that you either use or relate to the subject of your blog.
The more you write on specific topics the more people will find your content. When they read your content, there could be banners or links to products or services that are relevant. And there is a very high chance that people will want to buy these products.
This is how bloggers monetize their blogs. And it’s an industry that is growing every day as more products and services are available to market.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, content marketing is a powerful medium to create visibility for your business or blog. It can attract the audience you want to connect to and build authority in a chosen field. Whether you are building a brand, launching a venture, or monetizing your blog, content done right can not only build a global audience, it can earn you income.
Why not start today!
Learn How to Earn Income Online
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
When posting on social media or even on your blog including images is a great way to add some color to your content. People respond better to visually pleasing content than they do to heaps of words without images. It is easy enough to find and add photos to your content, so why not do it? The question is where can you find high-quality stock images to use and is free from copyright restrictions? Well, there are many websites and apps available for anyone from marketing agencies to home businesses. I list a few credible sites that you can get started with.
Copyright Permissions
One important point to consider is that images are generally subject to copyright and you can not simply download any image and use it. People forget this due to the ease with which one can download images from the web. If you are a business, be cautious and make sure you can use the images without infringing any copyright laws.
Take Your Own Photos
We all have smartphones with cameras and why not take some photos of your own to add some authentic images to your blog and social media posts. It’s free, you can quite effortlessly take photos to add some spice to your content. And these photos can be edited and you can even overlay text over them, for creating your own MEMEs.
Use Stock Images
If you are looking to add photos and images to your content the best sources are from stock photo websites. They offer vast collections of images and they offer free rights to use the images. Just remember to confirm the policy of the website you are downloading from, not all are the same!
Pixabay is my first resource for images, and it integrates nicely into my WordPress site. It has a vast range of over 2.5 million high-quality stock images, videos, and music, covering numerous topics. I’d definitely recommend it as a great place to start!
Rawpixel prides itself on having the most diverse range of stock photos in the industry! It has made it a mission to create a library of images that best represent our society at large. They also believe in making a positive impact on the world through their (one) world face project. Both Free and Premium images are available and have what they call, boards which are basically collections of images. There is a section called Public Domain, which lists images that have a Creative Commons License.
Freerange Stock provides high-quality stock images for free and has a community of over 750,000 users. Their site includes photos, textures, and illustrations that can be freely downloaded. They state on their site that all images are “licensed for broad commercial use without attribution”. Worth putting on your list of sites to mine for images for your posts!
Create MEMEs
MEMEs can attract attention by highlighting something with an image and text. MEMEs have taken the internet by storm as they have spread through instant messages and social media. A MEME is essentially just an image with a statement. These can help grab a viewer’s attention and increase interest in your content.
Conclusion
Images are a powerful way you can brighten up your posts on social media or on your website. They are easy to find, easy to insert into your content, and are likely to increase interest in your content! So why not add images to spice up your posts starting today!
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
If you want to promote your business on social media, you might feel overwhelmed by the number of available platforms to use. I have summarized some of the biggest platforms available at the moment. There are many more platforms that offer different user experiences. Many favour different types of media formats.
Here is a list of the most popular social media platforms to promote your business:
Facebook is the largest social media platform with a user base of over 2.8 billion monthly active users (Statistica) and growing. For this reason, it is a powerful platform to reach huge audiences from around the world, whether you are a personal or business brand.
You can easily create various types of profiles from personal profiles, business, or public figure profiles. User groups are a way for you to expand your reach and connect with people based on common interests, professions, or other topics. If you are a business looking for a very target advertising platform, then Facebook is a worthy platform to consider as you can be very specific with your ads.
Facebook is also known as one of the best platforms for building communities, for promoting both businesses and non-profit organizations.
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has approximately 1 billion active monthly users (Statistica) and is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms. Instagram is primarily a visual platform where you can share images and video content. It is popular with the younger generation and is also used by many brands to build online communities around their business.
If your business or service is very visual in nature, Instagram is worth considering. If you are an artist, designer, build houses, sell products, or any profession where visually displaying what you do makes sense, consider Instagram.
Twitter is a fast-paced social media platform that allows you to post short-form posts called tweets of 280 characters. If you have longer content you create threads where you string multiple tweets together to share longer topics. You can also share images and videos with your tweets when desired.
“As of the first quarter of 2021, Twitter had 199 million monetizable daily active users worldwide. The most-followed Twitter accounts include celebrities such as Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and former U.S. president Barack Obama.” – Statistica.
Twitter is more fast-paced than other platforms due to its short form and is widely used for posting the latest news updates like current events. It also can function well as a personal or business micro-blog.
LinkedIn is a social media platform aimed at businesses, entrepreneurs and professionals or anyone looking to grow their professional network. B2B businesses are very active on the platform and it has seen rapid growth over the past few years.
LinkedIn has over 700 million members. “It’s not the largest of the social networks, but with a specific business focus, it’s an audience worth noticing. . .” – according to Hootsuite article.
The main use of LinkedIn is to network and make connections with professionals. You can have a personal and business profile page and can also search for available jobs from anywhere in the world. LinkedIn has also become a place where professionals share knowledge, experience and advice in their fields and can be a great source of quality industry information
Tumblr was founded in 2007 and is another leading social media platform. As of January 2021, social network Tumblr had 327 million unique visitors worldwide, up from 347.5 million in January 2020 – Statistica.
In a nutshell, Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform for posting all kinds of written or visual posts. Many people use this platform as a way to connect with like-minded individuals, express their opinions, and discuss cultural topics.
I don’t think anyone has not yet watched a YouTube video, in fact, Youtube videos are often shared on other social media platforms and are the undisputed leader in video sharing. Over the pandemic, Youtube saw massive increases in usage as in-person events were canceled. Many companies held live Youtube webinars and events to make up for the lockdowns that were in place.
What YouTube allows users to do is upload their videos and share them with the world. They can also like and repost videos under their channel or profile, or only select people to view content by making it private.
According to Hootsuite “YouTube has more than 2 billion logged-in monthly users” and the range of users varies from young to old, with many parents saying their children watch Youtube regularly.
Although WhatsApp is a messaging app that many people use to send messages, share pictures, documents and send voice notes. Since it was bought by Facebook the platform has introduced various features making it an even more robust communication tool.
“There are currently more than 2 billion WhatsApp users around the globe and rising (WhatsApp, 2020). With 1.5 billion in 2018 and 1 billion in 2016, this number of WhatsApp users has been increasing at half a billion every two years.” – Oberlo
Whatsapp has the option to great groups and even setup a business profile. Recently it has added the option to make calls with multiple users, which will no doubt compete with Zoom.
TikTok has literally exploded into popularity as a video-sharing platform. It is a Chinese video-sharing platform that was launched in 2016 but has taken the world by storm. It used to only allow users to publish 60-second videos but has now extended the duration to 3 minutes due to the demand from creators.
TikTok has become incredibly popular with the younger generation but has also started being used by businesses and brands alike to create content to market their services.
Get Social
If you are looking to promote your business on social media to build awareness for what you do, consider the type of content you want to share (written, images, or video) and then select one. Many businesses feel they have to be on every social platform, this is not true. Choose one platform that best suits your needs and grow your audience by publishing content regularly.
Good Luck!
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.
Social media has become a vital part of our daily lives, and its influence is set to only increase in the future. So why is this important to you, or even your business? Well, it’s simple. Social media offers us interconnected networks where it is possible to be connected with most of the world’s population in the palm of your hand. And if you want to sell anything from products to services that’s something you might want to leverage. Yes… and it is free to use if you need a good enough reason to get started?
What is Social Media?
If you are unsure what social media is, let’s break it down.
Social media is a web-based platform designed to allow people and organizations, to share information and media, seamlessly via an interconnected network. This network allows people to find, connect, engage, share and communicate on a common platform. Where the internet allows you to find separate websites, social media brings all the people on a platform together. And this is where the true power of social media lies. In the interconnected nature of its platform.
That means if you are in the US you can effortlessly connect with people in Europe, Africa, or Asia by searching for content, people, or businesses. You can instantly interact, comment, or message a social media user. This creates huge opportunities to communicate with people from around the world.
How Brands are Using Social Media?
Social media enables businesses to share information about their products or services. And many brands have created community based initiatives to encourage interaction and sharing to gain greater exposure.
Dove is a brand that has used social media as a platform to create exposure through various social campaigns.
In 2004 they launched the “Real Beauty” campaign. Dove has used it to challenge people to not only see beauty as an aesthetic quality.
Dove launched its latest campaign in 2020 to highlight a message to look deeper than aesthetic beauty! Their campaign “Courage is Beautiful”. It was launched to honour healthcare workers that had sacrificed their time, and energy to serve others during the global pandemic.
Another way brands use social media is to encourage users to post images of themselves using the products they buy. This can further promote their products. Often these brands offer prizes or some form of recognition for their customers, which further grows brand loyalty.
At times brands have gone viral over posts they shared due to the controversial or humorous nature of the post. When this happens a brand may achieve massive overnight exposure through simple marketing campaigns.
Encouraging customers and prospects to interact with their content, brands can create greater exposure leading to greater sales and revenue!
Why is Social Media a Powerful Marketing Tool?
If you doubt the importance of social media in our lives and business just look at the numbers. Statistica states the following about the growth of social media usage in the next three years:
“The power of social networking is such that the number of worldwide users is expected to reach some 3.43 billion monthly active social media users by 2023, around a third of Earth’s entire population”
Many people consider social media for young people and question whether it is even a good strategy to use to grow their business. This couldn’t be further from the truth as both the younger and older generation are using social media to consume content, and engage with others.
Since the time of the pandemic many more people streamed to social media to not only keep updated with current affairs but also began engaging and sharing due to the lockdown restrictions which prevented us from interacting face to face.
According to Statistica not only is the number of users on social media platforms growing across the world but the amount of engagement from users as well. This has prompted brands to leverage opportunities to grow their businesses by using content marketing and advertising to take full advantage of this massive phenomenon.
“Despite the ubiquity of social networks, market potential is still increasing, as not only user figures but also user engagement continues to grow. On average, global internet users spend some 144 minutes per day surfing social networks. This prompts worldwide brands and their marketers to use that time and screen space to promote various products and services via social media marketing or social advertising.”
More organizations are investing in social media campaigns due to the massive reach and almost universal usage of the platform.
Social Media Benefits for your Business
To put the above into perspective from your business, here are some ways that social media can drastically benefit your business and complement any existing marketing efforts.
Opening a social media account is free.
It is simple to use.
You can use it on your computer, tablet or phone.
You can brand your profile.
You can post written content immediately.
People can engage and give you feedback.
You can share multimedia based content including audio and video.
You can potentially reach a vast audience.
It shows prospective customers what you are doing.
Create a sense of transparency.
Can help you promote events.
Can help you promote your products and services.
Can help you build a community around your business.
How to use Social Media to Market your Business?
There are many ways to use social media to grow your audience and gain exposure for your brand, here are a few points to get started:
Post original content about your business or industry.
Respond to customers or prospects’ comments.
Share news and content that is relevant to your business or industry.
Interact with others posts and grow your reach through engagement on other’s posts.
Contact potential customers directly.
So if you are thinking of marketing your business, seriously consider how you could use social media to grow your reach online. Start simple and grow, one post is the first step, and will start you on your journey!
In my last post, How Social Media Can Accelerate the Growth of Your Business?, I discussed what social media is, and how it can help you grow your business. In this article, I will help you get started with posting on Social Media. I will share some pointers to kick start the creative process, and help you get more focused on what to post for your business.
How to start Posting on Social Media?
As you start out you may feel overwhelmed and not know where to start. The best is to start in the most obvious place.
What type of venture do you have?
Do you sell products or services?
What do most people not know about your products or services?
What is the most important product or service you sell?
What convenience do you offer your customers?
Do you offer free delivery?
Do you have a guarantee on your service?
Do you over remote services?
Are you available 24/7?
Brainstorm by asking yourself questions about the business you run and find aspects of your products and services that you can share with your prospective customers.
Another way to brainstorm ideas is to think of problems that your customers may be struggling to solve, and then show how your product or service solves them. Create a reason for them to use your products or services. It can be a motivation for them to solve their problem.
When to Post on Social Media?
This is an important question and the answer to this will depend on several factors.
Are you a local business?
What time zones are your customers in?
When is your audience most likely to engage?
What times and days do you find the highest engagement?
You might have to test this for yourself and find what works best for your business. For example, maybe you are a local business. Then best times might be 10h30 and 13h00 when your customers have a tea break or lunch. Your target audience will determine which times are best. Research and test.
Scheduling Posts to Get Ahead
One way to get on top of posting content is to schedule posts ahead of time. Many social media platforms have built-in scheduling tools that allow you to do this. This can dramatically reduce the pressure to create a post daily, as you can plan ahead. For example, Facebook and Twitter offer users the ability to schedule posts which can help you to create posts in batches.
If your social media platform doesn’t support scheduling, you can try one of the many scheduling platforms available. Some require monthly subscriptions while others are free and offer different levels of control and features. One scheduling app to try is Crowdfire. It offers a free plan for up to three social media accounts, with limited functionality, but is possibly good enough to just get started.
Get Posting!
So there you have it, a few points to get started and spread the word. See social marketing as sharing information. Make it fun! If you find what you post is informative, interesting, and enjoyable then a good chance your customers will enjoy it too. Try to balance growing awareness and interest with promotion. Any try not to fall into the trap of always trying to make a sale, this will only chase prospects away.
The key is to get started, evaluate what works, and change where necessary!
Good luck!
Get ready to Launch into CyberSpace!
With a Step-By-Step Blueprint to Guide You to Success.