In a world where the internet in general and social media in particular are being used very successfully by many businesses to improve their bottom line, some small and medium sized businesses remain in the technological dark ages, at least as it relates to social media marketing. That’s certainly understandable given the fact that so many business activities are traditionally viewed as left-brain activities, while content creation for social media and the internet is viewed by many as a function of the right-brain.
It follows then that accountants and other small business owners, whose primary business activities tend to be left-brained, might find social media marketing to be a bit of a challenge. The reason is, social media marketing requires quality content, and writing for public consumption can be intimidating. But the truth is, coming up with quality content for social media can be fairly easy, regardless of whether you’re left-brained or right-brained.
There is no doubt that sitting in front of a computer monitor trying to come up with quality content for your social media followers can be scary. But, if you understand what the best use of social media actually is, coming up with content that advances that objective can actually be quite easy, and fun.
What social media is best used for is building your brand image. For the purposes of this article, “brand image” is defined as follows:
The perception of a company in the minds of those who make up the particular market served by that company. The brand image is a mirror reflection of the brand personality or product being. It’s what people believe about a brand – their thoughts, feelings, and expectations. In the context of building your company’s brand image, it’s what people believe about your company.
With that in mind, your objective in creating a social media presence should be to position your company as an expert in whatever market niche you serve. By positioning your company as an expert, you enhance its brand image.
This is a lot easier than you might think. It’s simply a matter of posting informative content on your social media pages. The good news is, it doesn’t need to be content that you created yourself. When you read an article online that is interesting and relevant to your market, just cut-and-paste a brief quote from the article and post it to your social media page with a link to the full article.
Of course, if your company publishes its own blog or theme-based content website, you can post quotes from and links to that content. Either way, this practice alone, done regularly, will do wonders for your company’s overall image as an expert in your field.
