4. What is Social Media? “Social media” refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and opinions using conversational web-based applications that make it possible to create and easily transmit content in the form of: Pictures Words Audio Video
7. You Can Use Facebook to: Network with the Community, Create, & Maintain Relationships Establish Your Brand as the Authority Showcase Photos and Videos Post Promotions Advertise Community Events to the Public
10. Tweeting is a great way for you to: Make Company Announcements Promote Products and Services Notify the Community About Events Provide Tips/Share Advice Reach Out to Consumers You Don’t Know
The most important thing about social media is the ability to get involved and create relationships with people rather than just having them see your commercial or hear your radio add that doesn’t make as big of an impact. Getting involved allows you to control what you say and what is being said about you. You now have to ability to hear what your customers have to say and do something about it.
Making yourself visible, Building credibility, and then turning those relationships into profit.
Ability to see what’s offered at the bakery, breakfast and lunch menus updated daily with specials, catering information, wedding cake designs and information, instructional videos, Home page is current showing Thanksgiving gift ideas and catering, promotions. Also has links to social networking sites.
Feature Photos and Videos of Products and Services
Facebook is all about customer interaction. Asking questions to spark peoples interest, staying current with photos of Halloween desserts, MSU/UofM cookies, posting articles of things related in the area, promoting other businesses in the area, and my favorite, posting photos of their customers, or their customers meals. This is great (I’ll take the credit) When you get tagged in a business’s photo, on any scale, you feel kinda special, you like that feeling of being important to a company, therefore you have great thoughts about that company (unless your food was bad). Another great thing about this is that when Ellen’s tags a friend, that friend on average has 500 friends who (if they have an open profile) can all see that (joe) was just tagged eating at this restaurant (who hopefully says its great) and then I see a picture of my friends tagged at Ellens, It sparks my interest and now I want to go to ellens, its free advertizing. *coupon offers
Twitter gives you the ability to connect with a lot of people who are typically not your friends or aquaintances. With Twitter you connect with people in the surrounding areas and people in similar industries. Its also important to connect with famous brands or people in your industry such as (food network, williamsonoma, and paula dean) and tweet with them in order to gain exposure to their networks as well. Twitters main purpose is to stay current with anything going on in your area, industry and business. A tweet is the equivalent of a text message so its just a brief update. For some businesses twitter is time consuming and confusing. And its honestly not helpful to your business unless you know what your doing with it. My favorite part of Twitter though and the reason I found it so beneficial is the ability to reach out to people. Everyday between 11-1 I would search anyone in southeast michigan area and see if anyone had tweeted things like “what should I get for lunch today” “I’m hungry” etc. and I’d then reach out the them saying “hey, why don’t you check out our café”…etc. So it was really fun being able to do that.
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Marketing is about getting the word out, engaging in conversations, taking suggestions, problem solving, educating your audience, and promoting your services.