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Is It Worth Spending My Valuable Time On Social Media?

If you are scratching your head wondering the same thing, I am pleased to let you know that you are not alone! We are being encouraged to embrace this new revolution: to ‘Tweet’, ‘Like’, ‘Post’, ‘Follow’ and generally use perfectly good working time to ‘keep up with modern technology’.

On Friday myself and some colleagues had some of the mystery removed and, I for one, feel far happier that I know why it could be useful and how I can make the most of this new marketing opportunity without sacrificing too much time.

Here are some of the key points that struck a chord:

1. Crowded market

Success online depends upon your site/services being found among the tens of millions of available other competing web offerings. For this, we are almost exclusively reliant of Google ranking us high enough in their results so potential customers are aware of our existence. GOOGLE LOVE SOCIAL MEDIA! Social media activity is now one of their key ranking factors - therefore, the more that they come across you on Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, Google+ and YouTube, the more likely they are to believe that your site has merit. If they send you clients, then you have the opportunity to show them how you can help and with any luck convert them into new customers.

2. It doesn’t have to take long each day/week.

There are numerous FREE tools which can help you manage your activity. A good example is Hootsuite - this allows you to write one post and it will send it out to all of your accounts at the same time. Not only that, you can schedule these in advance, meaning that you can compose in your quiet times and post when most people are likely to see them…. while you are working!

3. BLOG!

It really is worth having a blog on your site. Another little Google preference these days is for sites to have changing content. A blog is nothing more than an article that has been added to a website and every one you add is another bit of ‘fresh content’! Not only that, in most cases, it creates a completely new additional page for Google to index and use to send traffic to your site.

4. BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT!

Every business and every individual will have a different skills and knowledge but the good news is that you are free to write about anything that either you find interesting or even better, what your potential customers may find interesting. Don’t worry about being the best writer in the world - a blog is far less formal so as long as the subject is useful or interesting, you should be fine.

Andy Pringle
Start Your Own Business

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