The Chicago metropolitan area has more than 9.5 million residents, give or take a few. In the past, it may have seemed next to impossible – or too expensive — for a small business owner to create an advertising campaign that would reach even a fraction of that number. With the advent of social media marketing, that’s no longer the case. By tapping into social media, you have the potential to easily reach a lot more of your Chicago area clients.
As a business owner, you may be confused about how to use social media to help promote your business. If you’re already using social media for your personal use, you don’t have that far to go at all. Right now, you may already use Facebook to connect with friends, Twitter to send out links to interesting articles, Instagram to post cool photos or LinkedIn to find former colleagues.
By creating a profile that represents your business, you could be using those same social media platforms to connect in much the same way, and with an almost endless stream of potential customers. Facebook alone has literally hundreds of millions of users, so if you’re not using that platform to reach out to potential customers, you’re really losing out!
Social media, as its name suggests, is all about connecting with people on a personal level. It works as an advertising strategy because people feel that personal connection that makes them want to take action. By tapping into what people are talking about, you can introduce a product that people may be looking for, or you can offer services that meet the needs a customer has discussed in a particular post.
You could give potential customers that personal connection by speaking to them one-on-one too, but you’d have to spend countless hours at a conference or convention to get the same effect as you might get through brief, informative interactions via social media. Another great thing about social media sites: the search functions that come with each platform mean you’ll be able to more easily find the customers who are in need of your type of service.
By setting up your small business’ social media marketing strategy effectively, you can spend far less time on each individual conversation and more time actually serving the millions of customers in the Chicago area. Give your small business a big boost and start learning how to use social media today.
When you need help with social media marketing for your Chicago small business, get a copy of Sales 3.0: the New Contact Sport book. It offers tips, tricks and anecdotes about starting a social media campaign.
