How can you use social media to make the most of it?

yes you are missing LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a great platform to connect with people of your own niche. there are various sorts of groups and companies available on LinkedIn to whom you connect easily and start generating traffic to your website.
In fact LinkedIn is a great source of generating quality leads.
You must try it.

Hi there!

In terms of making the best use of Social Media platforms, it depends entirely on what your business entails and what you are aiming to get out of it. If you are a website selling products to consumers then most of your time should be spent using Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. This is because your aim is to make people aware of your products or services and the 3 abovementioned Social Media platforms are the most appropriate. If you are hoping to use Social Media to source clients then you will need to make use of LinkedIn as well.

In terms of 'tricks of the trade' if you are able to do so, I would suggest investing in an automation software, such as Tweetadder. This will allow you to find targetted accounts to follow, maximising the impact of your message. It also allows you to pre-schedule tweets. If you can't afford someone to manage your Social Media presence, then at least with Social Media automation software you can make it look like you do.

Good luck and feel free to ask if you have any other questions.

Neky

Social media for business has many advantages and the prime one is that it allows you to reach out to a large set of online audience base. You can get in touch with online communities and interact with a large number of potential customers. Advertising in online communities means that the online customers can now have reach you with utmost ease. Social networking gives the opportunity for you to give a quick response to your clients. The main thing that is required in SMM service is right strategy and proper planning.

Theres an article on emarketer.com which I read a while back which was all about how customers appreciate companies that reply on twitter. I can't post the link as I'm under 15 posts at the moment.

Have you tried drafting a social media plan for your business? This includes your goals, objectives, and social media activities that correspond to these among many others.

It' always good to have a blue print of your marketing strategies and that includes social media. You can come back to it any time to see if your efforts are paying off, if you are reaching the right audience, and if they are responding to any of your campaigns.

I hope this helps

Lace

Automated tools are useless without sales knowledge. You can't leverage the benefits unless you have a content plan, which is what the social platforms will make viral - to a point....... (which is what many dont understand).

Some companies ARE great at Facebook/Twitter marketing - but you need huge amounts of interesting and sales content for your social pages like they have, and the process just isnt as easy as many like to make out.

The Facebook/Twitter pages are to be treated as an extention of your website - but never a replacement for it

Think content....

just joined twitter.

Like anything you do for promotion, you need a measurable goal.

Start with that and then think about various ways that the tool of social media can be used to do that.

Not letting yourself get stuck with one site or strategy is a good start. Try juggling 2 or 3 sites, and try to integrate them together so that they support rather than counteract one another.

Good point esprintguy, two or three is the maximum when you're first starting out though. Making the most of social media means you need to build up a reputation and get yourself setup properly - then feel free to add others once the ones you are doing are going well.

The most important thing overall is strategy, define your message and make sure you have a backlog of content to keep posting before you start. You don't wanna run out of steam.

This is useful, a rundown of how to get the most of commercial social media;

Strategy - yes, even the 'wild west' of social media needs a strategy

Hygiene - checking the fundamentals and acquiring the 'real estate'

Listening - finding out who is saying what and where

Curating - building content by assembling existing online assets

Content - creating compelling unique content

Conversations - engaging with the communities and individuals that matter

Conversion - turning the targets on to your brand


Little bit more info here http://www.babelpr.com/social-media2/. I definitely think the content part is the most important.

Social media marketing is using social media interactions to generate exposure, increase website traffic, improve search rankings, generate leads, and improve sales.

How are we going to use Social Media to promote our business, get more clients and grow?

1. CREATE A FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE (FORMERLY KNOWN AS A FAN PAGE)
- Just like a personal Facebook profile, a business page will have the same functionalities such as being able to post status updates, pictures and business news
- The number of people who can view and like the page is limitless (although dependent on age restriction as regulated by Facebook). This gives us the possibility of an increased traffic.
- We can create a mirrored perspective of the information we have on our websites. Although we may need to make sure that the content we have for these Facebook profiles are friendly and interesting and not seemingly rigid and businesslike compared to what is contained in our website.
- When a Facebook user “likes” our business page, it automatically shows in their profile information thus relaying the message to their friends. This rouses curiosity and interest amongst people in their friends list. It gives us the chance to increase our visibility and visitors.
2. CREATE A FACEBOOK GROUP FOR OUR BUSINESS
- Unlike a Facebook profile or Facebook page, creating a business group serves as an exclusive circle amongst people within our organisation and those that we choose to get involved with us. We can limit the number of member we wish to have in our group by having Facebook Group Admin.
- A Facebook Group is ideal for our business should we wish to keep our prospects closer, especially those who have shown greater interest in doing business with us. We can keep them updated with what is going on in our organisation and just the same, we can also post updates, pictures and news and we can also put up a discussion board among group members.
- Creating a Facebook Group is great if we want to organise a personal or smaller scale interaction among our leads and prospects.
3. CREATE A TWITTER ACCOUNT/PROFILE
- As a micro-blogging social media channel, Twitter proves to be useful to broadcast updates about what is happening. Limited to a maximum of 140 characters per update, we are able to give them bits and pieces of how things are.
- Any one of our advertising enthusiasts can easily come up with a catch phrase to rouse curiosity and tweet it together with a link to our website to increase traffic.
- Pictures can also be posted should we want to show our followers the kind of product and services that we have.
- By posting tweets on trending topics (hash tagged discussions on Twitter), we increase our chance of getting noticed by Twitter users eventually making them follow us and become prospects.
4. ADVERTISE ON FACEBOOK
- Since advertising on Facebook is on a Pay Per Click basis, We can promote business to a specific group of people. We can easily set-up our campaign on Facebook and be a part of their advertisers, thus increasing our chances of getting more website traffic and generating more leads that we can eventually nurture to become customers.
5. PUT UP AND PARTICIPATE ON FACEBOOK POOLS
- If we are looking for a quick answer about a particular feature or product that we are promoting or we simply want to ask our audience about certain information or their opinion, we can create a Facebook Poll question that easily spreads out amongst users like a virus. It, again, creates interest among everyone online on Facebook.