promoting on Twitter and Facebook

shirleyheights

has anyone had positive result advertising their small business on either of the above or is it hype and a waste of time?

A relative is a piano tutor and was contacted by a company offering promotion services on both, but she would do it herself if there were real benefits.

mkooo

shirleyheights wrote: »

has anyone had positive result advertising their small business on either of the above or is it hype and a waste of time?

A relative is a piano tutor and was contacted by a company offering promotion services on both, but she would do it herself if there were real benefits.

A lot of it is hype, you need to still put time in to get anything back.

My advise is to use https://www.fiverr.com, get 2 nice backgrounds, maybe a landing page for facebook and twitter = $15 - £9 or so, and run a promotion whereby people who opt in to like the page get a small discount.

phill99

I run a small business. Ihave used both. I haven't had a single sale as a result of Twitter. Other people may have a different story.

I use Facebook as my shop window and regularly upload pics of work etc. This I find more useful as most customers are on FB and its easy for them to look at examples of work.

shirleyheights

Phil, are these existing customers, warm leads or completely new leads?

phill99

shirleyheights wrote: »

Phil, are these existing customers, warm leads or completely new leads?

With twitter, I have linked in with many local followers and twitters. So they are all new. I tweet with special offers etc. (cold)

With fb, I encourage potential customers to look at it (warm)

paulwf

I've had fantastic results from both facebook and twitter. This is both for quick turnaround promotions and also long term brand building. What is often overlooked is that if you have a strong local community on Twitter it is very useful for asking for help, building links with the community and making business links. This is very broad but I see Facebook as a tool to reach customers and Twitter as a tool to help me with my business.

There really isn't a quick fix, "promotion services" especially on twitter will come across as spammy. Instead you have to take the long view and plug away day after day and most importantly enjoy using them. The companies that just post the same advert time after time usually give up after a month or so.

Facebook groups for business have really useful statistics pages called "insights", all of which is free and will help you plan your promotions. If you do want to pay for promotions run Facebook ads yourself, I can't see any point in paying another person to do this as it is very simple to use their ad campaigns.

Charityworker

I've also had fantastic results from facebook and have just started on twitter too (although my daughter does the twitter for me as I don't know whats going on). The trick is to update it regularly and add as many pictures of what your doing as you can. Also don't do the things that annoy your customers like tag people in photos theyre not in.

I started by friending people I know. Then gradually people start adding themselves. Send each a message saying thanks for adding and how to contact you for more info.

Don't do the things that annoy people on facebook such as constantly inviting to events, tagging people in photos theyre not in etc. I once friended a washing machine repair shop in the town and they tagged me in a load of photos of old washing machines. I'm a make up and nail artist so they didn't look too good on my facebook. So I rang them and asked them to point out where I am in the photos. Then I unfriended them!

I would say that 80% of my work comes from facebook. If your in a small business you almost dont need to do any more advertising.

Sugar_Coated_Owl

I was thinking of advertising via facebook but how does it work? I don't understand the form and how much it costs. Could someone explain it for me. Thanks.

heart_free

At the very least having a page regularly updated on twitter, Facebook and google+ will help with search engine rankings - so worth it just for that!

floopnoodle

Twitter and Facebook are great for business but not in the traditional way of 'advertising'.

If you are a plumbing company and offer plumbing advice, tips and short how-tos and stuff like that then over time you will start to get work, but it's a long process.

If people visit your website, are on the fence, then see how helpful & active you are on twitter then it can help immensely with conversion.

If you join Twitter, follow anyone who mentions 'plumbing' and constantly post 'Phone us now for competitive quotes - no callout charge' then you will get sod-all.

Social media is all about the interaction and credibility. It can build you a very loyal following of customers and followers who will recommend you, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

paulwf

floopnoodle wrote: »

It can build you a very loyal following of customers and followers who will recommend you, but it takes a lot of time and effort.

To back that up one thing I see is I generally add followers at about the same rate in terms of percentage. What I mean is for example I might add new facebook followers at a rate of 2% of my total following every week. When you only have 100 followers that means you might only add 2 a week. However when you reach 1,000 you might add 20 a week. The longer you plug away at it the greater the rewards.

That's very simplistic but there is a "snowball effect" over time. The mistake people make is to give up after just a month, if they'd stuck at it for a year then you start seeing a much larger return.