A Blog and Social Media – Business Utilization
Why should my business utilize a blog and social media? What is social media anyway? What can it do for me? To many small to medium sized businesses, (and even large corporations) these questions are emerging. And the early adopters will get the early advantages.
What is Social Media?
There are many technical and philosophical answers from many sources. The description from searchenginewatch.com defines it as:
“A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.”
And I would add micro blogging like Twitter , video and photo sharing like YouTube and Flickr, Podcasts and of course, blog websites in general. Blogs are part of social media. And this is all about communities and conversations.
So social media is conversations and interactions using all types of media websites and communities. Written text, photos, video, music, podcasts. Each of these is another avenue to networking with potential and current clients.
What Can Social Media Do For or To My Business?
There are many social media websites that will give you more exposure to more potential clients. It provides a dramatically increased networking opportunity. You can build affinity and manage customer relationships very effectively using social media. Also, what if there are conversations about your business in a social media community and you are not there to read and react to manage your brand online? Then you are using the “head in the sand” approach. And this is amplified in a local or regional marketplace.
Is a Blog Social Media?
A blog is definitely social media. They are more casual conversations with a community that allows the community to comment on your blog posts and promote or demote your blog post. To some businesses, this seems very scary. A daunting task.
Why Should My Business Use a Blog & Social Media?
There are multiple benefits from having a business blog. Building authority, client support, more casual conversations with the marketplace (accessibility), and SEO search engine optimization. Also, managing your brand reputation in the “cloud”. But an amazing synergy occurs when you extend your blog’s reach by promoting it in other social media channels.
By tweeting your blog posts, many more people will get a chance to find out about your business and you will build a network around your marketplace. By building a YouTube channel and promoting your business through video, an extremely large community will learn about you. And you can embed those videos in your blog! By building and excellent Facebook group, you can run special localized promotion to your Facebook friends. By promoting your blog posts on social news websites like Digg, or social bookmarking websites like Del.icio.us, you get more exposure in other large communities.
And all of this will help drive more traffic to your blog! Third Party Blogs is in business to create your blog website and write your blog posts for you. We will help you create your Youtube channel, Facebook and Twitter account. We will promote your blog posts. We will help you use all of these things together which will drive new and increasing traffic to your blog and business website.
