Forget Social Media, Start With Something You Don’t Know

A friend recently told me that she was starting her own business and wanted to learn how to use social media to promote the new venture.

I asked her if she already used Facebook to keep in touch with her friends and family. Of course, like most of us, she was a regular user. She was also a prolific tweeter and over the years had built up a significant network on Linkedin.

The fact is, she was already pretty proficient on social media.

Of course, it is much easier to maintain a personal social media profile than a business one. Or is it?

The key to a building a successful personal or professional social media profile is great content and positive engagement. Great content comes in many forms, including text, photos, videos, etc. etc. Everyday life provides great content for a personal account. In business, you might have to work a little harder to create content via your blog, customer testimonials, PR, etc. but great content basically boils down to stuff you want to share and things you think your followers will like. Positive engagement comes from just being social (the very essence of social media).

Just as you wouldn’t try and sell something using your personal social media account, the same rules apply for a business account. Social media is all about the engagement and the nurturing of relationships. You should leave the selling to other channels like your website and of course, email marketing.

Because social media is pretty simple, I suggested to my friend that she should perhaps invest more time in learning about things she didn’t already know about. A great starting point would be something that works hand in glove with social media and is a proven generator of revenue like email marketing.

And where is the best place to start learning about email marketing? Well, you could do a lot worse than start here.

This post first appeared on the iContact Email Marketing Blog.

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