The New Scope of Social Networking: Expanding your Brand through Facebook, Twitter, and More

First the facts: there are over 800 million active Facebook users; Twitter averages about 140 million Tweets per day; and Google + created nearly 100 million users in one year. For many these stats are utterly unimaginable. Furthermore, many find it difficult to reconcile the fact that there are millions of people freely sharing information about themselves and their lives online with the notion that there is an opportunity to promote your brand or business.

Throughout my years in the industry, when I try to breech the subject of establishing a social networking presence for business they are, typically, very hesitant. “I don’t see the point” or “I don’t have time for that” are the most popular answers to my suggestion. While Facebook and Twitter can be enormous time drains (most of us have had those days where we spend 8 hours on Facebook), they inherently do not have to be time-consuming or difficult to understand.

In terms of promoting your business’ overall web presence, social media has never been more important. It’s been shown that that pages and information that has been shared through social networking ranks higher in organic searches (i.e. via a search engine). This is the result of the search engine’s retooling their algorithms and a basic SEO tenant: backlinks. Secondly, it’s becoming increasingly likely (particularly with Google now in the social media game) that searches will become intertwined with one’s Facebook and Google + accounts. Organic searches will most likely be determined by relevancy to one’s “likes” which makes having a social media presence absolutely vital.

Then there is notion of reaching out and interacting with your customer-base as well as your community. For those businesses which are dedicated to their communities and local charitable organizations, social networking is one of the best methods to encourage your customers and followers to get more involved. It’s also great to have additional avenues to receive feedback, solicit reviews, and encourage a general sense of interaction with your customers.

Of course, there still remain challenges to promoting your brand or business of Facebook, Twitter, and the like. First and foremost, one must create content that people are willing to (1) read, (2) like, and (3) share. This content, ideally, should be tailored in accordance with your overall web strategy so as to increase relevancy. A social media profile, additionally, has to be active. Updating your profile twice a year just won’t cut it. One needs regularly occurring posts so as to create a follower-base and maintain it.

With the proper strategy, however, your business will surely reap considerable rewards for having an active social media presence.