Ten or twenty years ago, companies had this need to own a website, but now every business not only has a website but also actively participates in social networking media for branding and advertising purposes. And as businesses gain confidence and familiarity with the social web, the next logical step to take is effective social media promotion.

Once you have started a social media effort, how would you promote it?

Running and promoting a social media program depends on the reasons for a company or brand’s social media participation, the audience it’s trying to reach, its budget or resources and the actual social platforms being used. Answering a few key questions can help resolve the dilemma of identifying which should be part of the social media promotion strategy.

What is your business’ primary goal? Secondary goals? Where does potential clients/customers spend their time on the social web and what do they do there? On what social websites is your business already participating? What existing resources can be used and what new resources will you need to forecast and budget for?

For example, if you chose to use Facebook fan page for promotion, some of the things you can do there are: advertising, contest or giveaway promotions to encourage fans to share links back to your fan page, participating in groups and other fan pages that reach the audience you want to target, leverage mailing lists of other groups or fan pages for the same brand, creation of a widget that provides the ability to interact, offers value and invites users back to your fan page.

Off Facebook, you can do PPC on major search engines to a landing page, SEO and link building to landing pages, press release optimization & promotion, email promotions to segmented lists, cross promotion to Facebook fan page from other social media properties, and more.

All of these social media efforts can bring about expected business results. You just have to check out what you can do with every social networking site to further boost your business. Each of these social media has unique features to keep your business gain popularity and grow customers. For more information on social media promotion and marketing tips, please subscribe to my blog.

Annetta Powell
Your Professional Success Coach