Promotions of the Free Enterprise System, the rise of social media and declining job markets have caused a significant increase in the number of independent consultants. That means more people are choosing entrepreneurship as their career path.
If you’re an expert at anything, you have an opportunity to start a consulting business and become a known expert in your niche. You don't have to be in some really cool business to succeed. You don't even need to have a large marketing budget.
Instead, you just need a plan, a strategy to market yourself to the right target market in the right manner. For example, look at these examples of people who applied the same concept and made a fortune:
- Kindergarten Teacher Earns $700,000 by Selling Lesson Plans Online
- Six-Figure Businesses Built for Less Than $100: 17 Lessons Learned
In these cases, the investment wasn’t huge, the marketing wasn’t mind blowing. They started small, stayed consistent with their idea, kept working and achieved significant success.
Networking And Relationships Hold The Key
The real definition of networking to is building relationships before you need them. ~Diane Darling [tweet this]
No matter what your niche happens to be. Networking is absolutely the best method to expand your market, create credibility and grow.
Today creating your brand identity online, having a well-designed and regularly updated blog, and connecting with people on social networks makes marketing and advertising so much easier and more fun. It is the least expensive and most rewarding method of marketing for your business.
While sharing with your network what you are working on, commenting on other people’s activities and seeing what they are working on, it's much easier to keep track of potential business opportunities. In addition, it is a great way to keep your brand name in the news flow.
The rise of social networking platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ has made networking and relationship management easier than ever.
Using Social Media For Your Business
Many experts put all of their time and energy into creating product or becoming a master in their field. They spend a lot of money, take training classes and practice hard. Instead they should invest time and energy into learning how to grow their enterprise.
You may be a life coach, a public speaker with great speaking skills, a proof reader, a copywriter, a financial planner, a painter or anything at which you are good. However your skills will not sell by themselves. Networking, marketing and advertising are those areas where you need to focus to make it big.
Here are a few ideas you can employ for successful promotions that will result in an increase in your brand value and your business revenue:
Start A Facebook Page
As a business owner, I assume that you already are active on Facebook and working on your personal branding. However, in addition to your personal profile, it is important that you also start a business page for your independent business. You can use the business page to promote what you are working on. You can engage with your business network by sharing useful information and asking questions.
A Facebook page gives you a professional image on Facebook and you definitely want to get that brand image as fast as possible.
Get A Handle On Twitter
Twitter is one of the most fascinating communication tools on the internet. They say that Twitter is a conversation happening whether or not you participate. As a business owner you definitely want to participate, don’t you?
Create a Twitter account and not just share your own thoughts but also share relevant stories in the field where you are calling yourself an expert. This will help enormously with your brand identity and draw more people to you.
Get A Good Website And Write Blog Posts
You do need a website if you are an independent consultant, or a small business owner in any profession! You need a world class website to stand out. If you really want to make an impact, you need to write blog posts regularly. Your website, powered by your blog posts opens a whole new world of opportunity to advance your brand value and personal reputation. It is the most credible tool available to advance your professional growth in both a helpful and a cost-effective manner.
Speaking of creating a website for your business and setting up a blog, I think you definitely want to check out these popular posts. These will help you get an idea of how simple the process is:
- Why Blogging Is Important To Your Personal Branding Efforts
- How To Setup Your Self-Hosted WordPress Website And Blog
- Introducing Website Setup Education Program – A Powerful Course
If you already have a website, here are some of the most important components required for your website. If these apply to you and you don’t have them, maybe it’s time that you did:
Get A Prominent ABOUT Page
This is the page your visitors come to if this is the first time they landed on your website and liked your design or content. This page is the second most important page on your website after your homepage. This is the page where you are selling yourself to your visitor.
Let your visitors know who you are, what your background is and your story. Talk about your expertise and experience. Talk about your degrees, certifications or courses you’ve taken if it is going to help build credibility in your niche. Be sure to include contact information or a link to your contact form on your ABOUT page.
Create A SERVICES Page
This is another important page on your website. This is the place where you describe your services and show readers the benefits of your services. You can set this up like a sales page and include pricing and a Buy button if applicable. You can include a contact form so visitors can contact you for a quote.
In my case, I have a separate website for the services that my Krishna World Wide Team provides. So I haven’t added a service page here. You need to decide how you want to structure things for your business.
Get A Good Presence On Google+
Google+ is the second largest social networking website according to the search engine giant. If you have a website, you better start to believe that Google+ is increasingly influencing search results on Google’s platform.
Being on Google+ is important for not just networking but also for the SEO of your website. You definitely want to ride the wave and drive as much benefit as possible from the growth of Google+. Check out the post I wrote about the importance of Google Authorship for bloggers.
Get a good profile, get a page for your website, start adding people to your circles, start sharing and building relationships on Google+.
Get Serious About LinkedIn
This is the only network created strictly for professional needs (job search and business networking) unlike most other social networks. It should be obvious that every professional needs a profile on LinkedIn. Check out this recent post where I discussed the importance of using LinkedIn:
Joining LinkedIn is not just about creating a profile which is the first important step. It is important to search and join relevant LinkedIn groups or start a LinkedIn group of your own. Stay active in these groups, participate in conversations, network and build relationships through online and in-person meetings.
These are just a few simple tips to create a better brand value, online reputation and to expand your reach using social media. If you do it the right way, you can grow your business and gain clients with minimum expenses for marketing and advertisements.
Over To You – Share Your Thoughts
What are some of the main challenges that you see when you think of social media marketing? Do you think doing-it-yourself is an appropriate social media marketing method for small business owners?
Please share your thoughts in the comments or click here. Thank you kindly!
This is what we did when we started our business. Social media helped us not just with branding but in networking with some incredible people from around the world. Entrepreneurs ought to take these tips and grow their businesses.
Absolutely!
Hi Kumar,
I will highly recommend to read this post to my colleagues. Thank you as always. 🙂
Kind Regards,
Geraldine
You are very welcome Geraldne! I am glad you liked it.
Regards,
Kumar
Hi Gauraw,
Thanks for writing this Helpful guide on Promoting Business via Social Media. I am glad that you mentioned Linkedin in there. As most of the Web is just talking about FB, Twitter and Google+. While Linkedin also plays a big role in promotions. The good thing about Linkedin and Google+ is that they don’t have scam users or fake profiles so their users take messages and shares more seriously.
With Regards.
Hello Gaurav,
Thank you for coming again and adding value to the post wit your thoughts. Speaking of scam users, well there are some on LinkedIn and Google+ as well. However, the percentage on these websites is much less when compared with Facebook or Twitter. And serious businesses do not ignore LinkedIn in particular.
Regards,
Kumar
Using social media is one of the greatest ways to have your business promoted out there. These are some of the most wonderful things that are helping up coming budding business makers do every thing from scratch. The quality promotion material in personal terms also helps much.
Hi Kumar! This post offers a great overview of the importance of social media to business success. Now I have to go back and review my “About” page!
Hi Dawn,
Nice to meet you and thank you for helping me with that question on our Facebook group. I look forward to get to know you and learn a few things from you as well.
Regards,
Kumar
Social media is one of the best one to promote our business into the internet marketing, which causes to easily target the potential customers of a business. Now social media ruling the world, everyone using social media for getting their business promotion.
Must say you have researched a lot appreciate you a lot. I think banner creation and publishing is also an equally effective for promoting your business. It is a great way to attract your customers.
Great insight and tips to branding yourself and you`re right about LinkedIN. I haven`t taken advantage of that business network but will after reading your post. Thanks for the information.
I’m really impressed you were able to hit all of the big factors in social media all in one article. Honestly, people are becoming really reliant on Facebook and Twitter, which is good. But, they often overlook Google+ and LinkedIn simply because they aren’t as popular. The social media platform that carries the most weight right now in search rankings is Google+, so it’s pretty vital you get your information on there as soon as possible, and remain active. Thanks for sharing!
I agree. facebook, twitter with a company website is a plus. This is a good site thanks for sharing all other information.
Great stuff Kumar Gauraw .Social media is the best way to promote our business.thanks for sharing .
I will highly recommend to read this post to my colleagues. Thank you as always.
Social media has definitely come a long way with businesses. Facebook pages have become the main source for people to find more information about businesses and such. I think to add on to this already well-written article, I would say that learning how to make the most out of hashtags will serve any business well. I think hashtags are the future of social media. Thanks for sharing.
These are great ways to build an online presence. One suggestion would be to make sure you are able to integrate these things and get them to work together. I’ve seen a lot of great facebook sites with very poor web pages. Realize what you are trying to convert for.
You have really put Twitter into detail within this post and businesses don’t all understand how powerful of a tool it can be to promote themselves (if done correctly). I had much enjoyment reading this post and I will be looking out for your next post
Promoting business on social networking site is really giving more benefit, As we know now day everyone connected to social networking site, So for better marketing use social media sites. and one of most we can promote free. Thanks sir
Very Well written article.You almost covered everything in it.
Can you please also post about how to promote any website or blog?
Thanks
I think you have appointed some great information here. Social media is the most popular form of adverting or promotion now and in the future. Its something we all must study. This will help, Thanks.
Hello Kumar Gauraw,
Social media does play a great rule in helping to market your website.
We should remember that everyone nowadays is on social media and it is one of the biggest platform.
Starting a FB page and getting a twitter handler are the starting point for your boost in your business.
Also, one should not forget the power of creating about us and services page.
Keep up the good work.
I liked your article. It’s a great informative post. But one should follow the social media rules too. Social media gives great exposure to your brand. Sometimes people do too much postings on FB on a day. for this, your audience may get irritated. thanks for this post.