6 Major Social media sites where you should have your Business Presence As a small business owner, you can leverage on social media to get more leads and customers as they are extremely personal medium of communication and people trust them more then offline mode of promotion (flyers, local tv and print ads etc). Here are 5 major social media sites on which you can leverage on to build more brand visibility and awareness. I will write individual posts in detail covering each of them in coming weeks too, Facebook - with over billion users, it is safe to assume that almost each of your potential customer is on it. Of course this doesn't mean that you start adding them as friends and start sending them personal messages but you want to use facebook more professionally. I will cover Facebook marketing in another future post, but for the time being, create your own company and product page on facebook and regularly update them with useful information. How to use Facebook 1. Create Company page 2. Create Product page 3. Use company/product page to share informative content.(but avoid having too many updates specially about your product features) Twitter - Twitter with its 600+ Million users (December 2012 figure) can be a great source of building a brand awareness as well as finding new customers. Lot of people uses hashtags to show their displeasure about certain company, product and service, something on which you can latch on. How to use Twitter 1. Tweet informative articles written by you as well as retweet useful content you found on the web and twitter feed. 2. Use twitter hashtags to reach wider and more targeted audience. 3. use twitter search to find people who are asking questions or complaining about your competitors 4. Follow your customers as well as A list users, most often they do follow you back and often retweets useful tweets. Google+ - there was a news that G+ has overtaken linkedin as the 3rd largest social media site, though people still prefers facebook for social interaction, as a business owner, you can not ignore Google+. Since google uses your filled data at many of its other properties as well as the G+ content ranks well in google, it can be an excellent source of sharing knowledge and brand building. How to use Google+ 1. Create your company listing with urls and description about your company. Most likely it will rank really well in google. 2. Follow other users and update your G+ account regularly including lengthy posts. You can always ask your followers to +1 the post. Linkedin - a site for professionals, it is an excellent platform for doing networking, spreading brand awareness and building brand authority. Do not forget to create your company listing too. How to use Linkedin 1. Create your Company Page. 2. Create a group in your vertical. Pinterest - Pinterest probably won't appeal to everyone, certainly not to business users but it does have huge following with females so if that is your target demography, promoting your brand product images can really help you in building your brand visibility. How to use Pinterest - 1. Upload your product images on your pin boards Quora - Though Quora still hasn't become as mainstream as some of the above mentioned sites, it can be an excellent platform to target startups and early adapters. Its content also rank really well in search engine and recently they have introduce quora blogs too. How to use Quora 1. Create your company page 2. actively participate in the questions and answers but do not promote yourself 3. Publish your content on quora blogs. Previous Article Advanced Internet Marketing Glossary Next Article How to do Keyword Research for your Niche