Written by: Luis Ortega • March 10, 2015• Ask the Expert

Social Media to Promote Your Business

When you have a good experience at a new restaurant, it’s likely you won’t keep the place a secret. After all, when people enjoy a great meal, exceptional service or a pleasant atmosphere, they typically tell other people about it. Many of us are naturally curious about what’s new, popular or just plain good around town, and sharing with others is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to establish which locations are the best.

In that sense, there are many reasons to adopt a social media strategy. Growing your brand awareness, taking advantage of low cost marketing, and engaging your customers in creative ways are some of them. In order to make the best decision, you will have to determine how interactive you want to be with your customers.

Fortunately, in the past seven years, there has been an explosion of opportunities to market your goods or services online. Facebook, Instagram, and Yelp are some content management providers that are prominent today. Following are some pros and cons to help you choose among these popular channels.

Facebook:

The largest social media network is one of the easiest to use. Businesses can post text, pictures, and videos. If promoted well (by paid social media advertising), visibility can expand significantly. Smartly, Facebook facilitates the viral spread of a page’s popularity via subscribers who choose to “like” a page.

Pros: User base is exceedingly large, with many constituents to inform and influence. Multiple formats of media are permitted (text, videos, photos, etc.)
Cons: Can’t customize page beyond the standard format. Closed environment. Only Facebook users can “like” your business.

Yelp:

It is a business recommendation network with more than 86,000 business accounts, 67 million cumulative reviews, and a growing (35%) percentage of reviews from mobile devices. It has been touted as a quintessential social marketing site for independent businesses.

Pros: Traffic – with more than 130 million monthly visitors. Branded Well – When Apple users use Siri to find a company, it actually pulls Yelp data.
Cons: Filtered reviews: Yelp asserts to have developed an algorithm that determines which customer reviews are real and fake, which means that some reviews may not appear. Aggressive salespeople who are known to pressure business owners into long contracts to engage in sponsored ad campaigns.

Instagram:

They say a picture paints a thousand words, and this is certainly the case for the visual storytelling platform, Instagram. The app now has more than 150 million monthly users and is growing fast. These users will be made up of people who either use it for their personal use or to market their business. However, all of these people have one thing in common. They all want to have as many followers as possible. Instagram growth services similar to Nitreo, (https://nitreo.com) can not only help you expand your reach, and to grow your profile, but they can also help you to build your brand, proving beneficial for businesses. But this isn’t the only positive that Instagram can offer, as it can also provide a creative, cost effective way for an organization or business to promote their product or service. Businesses can also make use of the top instagram influencers operating on the platform to reach a wider audience when promoting their brands and products online – this is something that is becoming increasingly popular and is being adopted across various industries.

Pros: Hashtags, a targeted filtering tool that helps organizations connect with users who are actively looking for that search term, like #tbt (throwbackthursday). Visual exposure: the still photo and 15-second-video-based app tells the business story graphically, and it lists viewers’ comments directly below.
Cons: No HTML links. Currently you can’t click on a link or URL in Instagram from the caption or comments section. Significant time commitment: to stay relevant and current on Instagram, you must post content daily, as every post is pushed into a stream of content rushing past your followers’ eyes.

Fellow Villagers, don’t be discouraged if it seems daunting at first. Get into it. With a little practice, you will quickly discover that through savvy social media marketing, your business online status can soon become totally #macdaddy!

Luis Ortega owns and operates security consulting firm SAI, located at 13981 South Dixie Highway in Palmetto Bay. You can reach him at (305) 253-7600 or find SAI at facebook.com/saiops, on Instagram at @saiguns, and on Yelp!

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Last modified: March 10, 2015