Marketing with Social Media

Marketing with Social Media: 10 Easy Steps to success for Business is your step-by-step guide to using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube to promote your business. In 10 quick and easy steps, you'll learn how to use social media effectively, establish a simple marketing plan and measure the results of your efforts. You'll learn the basics of building profile pages, and how to create appropriate content that can be accessed by thousands of potential customers. This new edition is packed full of tips, traps to avoid and social media success stories, plus information on the newer platforms including Vine and Instagram.

Social media is a low-cost marketing strategy that can be a huge bonus to small businesses. With the right technique, you can get to know your customers better, and expand your networks without breaking the bank, all while retaining full control over your message. Marketing with Social Media shows you how best to shape your social media strategy to suit your particular business, with practical advice and expert insight into the components of a successful campaign. You'll learn to:

• Create a profitable social media strategy for your business
• Exploit each platform to reap the highest returns
• Master the basics of each platform, and optimise your content
• Shape your reputation and promote your social media efforts

Early success is important to the longevity of a resource-poor company's campaign. When done correctly, social media can propel a small business into unprecedented profitability, whereas misguided or half-hearted attempts result in wasted time. For small business owners seeking increased exposure without increased expenses, Marketing with Social Media is a roadmap to online social media campaigns.

About the author ix

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction xiii

Opening story xv

1 What is social media? Policy, plan and profitability 1

2 Facebook basics and content ideas 29

3 LinkedIn basics and networking using LinkedIn 53

4 Twitter basics and using Twitter for your business 81

5 Online etiquette and preserving your reputation 107

6 YouTube explained 127

7 Google+ and why it’s important for SEO 145

8 Pinterest and pinning the best images 155

9 Vine and Instagram basics to create great video 163

10 Making your website work and promoting your social media efforts 171

Marketing with Social Media Wrap 193

Appendix A: Daisy’s social media plan 195

Appendix B: Glossary 199

Index 203

LINDA COLES is a social media specialist helping businesses make the most of online tools to grow their customers and networks. A conference speaker and author on building relationships, she also consults on how to use relationships, online and off, as a way to grow your business connection base and network online effectively.

A hands-on guide for promoting your business, and yourself, through social media

Most people maintain a personal profile on at least one of the major social networking platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube. However, very few understand how to effectively market themselves or their businesses on these platforms. In Marketing with Social Media, top influencer and social media expert Linda Coles provides the step-by-step guidance you need to successfully promote your business or your skills through social media.

It starts by helping you choose which social platform is best for your business goals, then moves on to explain the pros and cons of the major social networks and also provides useful introductions to newer platforms like Instagram, Vine and Pinterest. With updated coverage of the changes to Facebook and LinkedIn, this is a practical guide for business marketers, entrepreneurs and SMEs seeking to leverage social media to build a brand and increase their reach using techniques that are simple, time-effective and low cost.