Social Media Marketing and Patting Yourself on the Back

LikeShareSome small businesses do nearly everything right when it comes to promoting their businesses online. I want to add one more suggestion to your arsenal of internet marketing tips.

If you and your company are going to put forth the effort to maintain and update a blog on your website; if you are producing videos to promote your business and uploading them to youtube and optimizing the titles and descriptions and custom thumbnails; if you are going the extra step to make sure you share those blog posts and videos to your company facebook page – go ahead and give yourself and pat on the back and give that content a like and a share! It’s ok, you can do it. You are allowed to do it. I WANT you to do it. It actually surprises me when I see a fairly robust campaign for a business that was consistently maintained and built upon that has a large number of posts and updates with no thumbs up, likes, shares or follows. What a shame!

I hate to sound like I’m scolding, but I shake my head thinking that more than one person may have even had input in creating and publishing that content and no one thought to like it. Maybe they consciously avoided liking it, for fear of seeming to be a “spammer” to friends and family and by mixing their personal and professional lives. Maybe as an employee, but not as an owner of the business, they don’t feel the need to go that extra step to promote something that isn’t really theirs. Listen up – for many small businesses, the success of the company can directly reflect on how far your career can advance there. Put it out there and spread the word and you may be rewarded for it later. As for small business owners, the more present you are in your company’s internet marketing efforts, the more successful they will be. At the very least, click the thumbs up to “approve this message”.

Beyond that, don’t be afraid to ask your personal network to like and share your updates as well. Not everyone will do it, but some may and your post could turn out to be relevant to someone in THEIR network. That’s the way social media can really shine for you and your business.