The world we live in has become fast paced, and for good reason too. Technology has made incredible strides in just our lifetimes alone, and communication is faster and easier than ever. Of these new forms of communication, there is a lot of power in marketing for your business digitally, whether it be through the use of mobile marketing, email marketing, or social media. Here at Paradiso Insurance, we have found a lot of success with using social media to market our agency, and we wanted to give local businesses and our clients some tips on how they can do the same.
Where to Begin
If your business isn’t on social media yet, then a great place to start would be to sign up for Facebook and Twitter. To sign up for Facebook, you’ll need to have a personal account already and be logged in, and then select “Create Pages” from the list of options in the upper right hand corner. After that, Facebook has a series of prompts that will appear to help guide you through creating your company page, as well as showing you the basics on how to use it during your first time visiting your new page. For Twitter, things are a little easier when it comes to getting started. 
There’s essentially no difference between a business and personal page on Twitter, aside from the information you provide when you sign up. You can find the signup button in the upper right hand corner of their homepage. From there, simply follow the prompts they provide in order get things started.
If you’ve already gotten things kicked off with either Facebook or Twitter, you can try signing up for Pinterest, Instagram, or Google+. Many people have already seen the power of marketing through Pinterest, because it is a collection of visual content where people can see your goods or services first hand. A lot of businesses haven’t gotten onto Instagram or Google+ quite yet, but they are still very powerful social media platforms. Instagram allows you an outlet where you can connect with a younger, more tech-savvy audience, while Google+ is owned by the largest search engine powerhouse on the internet, with over 2.5 billion users total. If you’re not on these social media outlets quite yet, we suggest you pay them a visit.
Posting Online
So now you’re all signed up on your favorite social media sites, but you need to fill your page with content. Great! Now is the time where you can visually demonstrate exactly what it’s like to work with your company, and try to do so in a way that others (who haven’t experienced your business quite yet) will want to connect with you or check out what you have to offer. You have to highlight the things that make working with your business more enjoyable than working with your competitors, and develop trust with your audience in the process. Our insurance agency does this by using consistent visual content (such as photos, graphics, and other images) that display our agency’s brand, message, or core values, which in turn, attracts others with similar interests. You can post a blog from your website, visual content that your marketing team came up with, or even videos featuring your business, clients, or events.
Also, each social media outlet works a little bit differently, so you’ll have to adjust your posts to tailor them to the social media outlet you’re using. For Facebook, you can post anything from texts to visuals, external links, and more, and we would suggest using about one post a day. With Pinterest or Instagram, these social media outlets are specifically for images, but you can include your business’ physical address in each and use branded visuals so that people will think of your business more after seeing one of your posts. With Twitter, you can post multiple times a day, because one tweet doesn’t last as long as other social media posts will. Lastly, with Google+, you can post to specific communities that share your interests, so try to search for some communities before you decide to put yourself out there.
Integrating in the Social World
Remember, social media is just another tool that you can use to communicate with your customers. In next week’s blog, we’ll talk about some slightly more advanced social media tactics that should help you drive engagement with your audience, because we’ve only just scratched the surface. Check back with our blog next week where we will cover hashtagging, boosting your posts, branding, and more!
