Social media enables businesses to connect with consumers on a personal level that has never been so accessible before. It has established a two way communication system between seller and buyer. If you are looking to use Social Media in your business, firstly you should map out what it is you want to achieve from these sites as they are used in very different ways.

Twitter is useful for customer engagement, brand positioning and users can actively respond to you by ‘hastagging’, which is a brilliant way to search for any particular term that you want to look for.

Facebook is better for engaging with people, sharing your message, being helpful to your audience and advertising/promoting what you do. It can help funnel traffic towards your site and is a great tool if you work on the basis of ‘the more you give, the more you shall receive’.

Both sites are ideal for boosting search engine optimisation (SEO) if you know how!

When beginning the set up for your social media, decide what it is you wish to be publishing. Learn how to manage customer interaction and take the time out to pass onto staff what it is you wish to gain from using social media.

Once you have created a place for your company in the world of social media, check out direct and indirect competitors pages to help you get an understanding of which practices are being used to engage customers. Try researching different ways in which social media platforms are benefitting smaller companies with advertising and see if they would be a suitable way to help your company.

Social media is a great tool for marketing and advertising, however it will be only be as effective if you take the time out to learn how to fully understand and utilise the sites.

Article courtesy of Sammy Blindell, Social Strategist

Google now looks at Google+ activity as a way to provide socially relevant search results. So when you search for something on Google while being logged in to your Google account, you will see different results than when you aren’t logged in. When logged in, the results contain the posts shared by people in your circles. So as more and more people have you in their circles, your posts will automatically be pushed to top of the page when these users search for something you have posted about.

It is also safe to anticipate that Google+ will soon be integrated with all of the Google products. Just to name a few, I can think of Google Docs, Google Books, Google Places, Google Checkout, Google Chrome, Google’s Android platform, and the list could go on. It’s never too soon to get in the game and capitalize this new social media channel.

If you haven’t already created a Google+ profile, head over to https://plus.google.com and signup with your Google account. Start by filling up your profile. You can add profile pictures, a short bio, contact details, links to your other social profiles, links to your sites, and so on. Spend some time and get familiar with Google+.

With Google+, organizing your friends and followers is done with Circles. Circles let you select which group of people you will share certain updates with. Circles can be of two types, inbound and outbound. An inbound circle is a list of people you want to follow, while an outbound circle is a list of people you want to share a certain type of information with. You can put people in more than one circle. You can also move or copy users from one circle to another by simply dragging their profiles from one circle to another. Keeping your circles organized will help you get the most out of Google+ in the long run. Start engaging with your audience by posting new updates or sharing other people’s posts that you find interesting.

Most important in marketing sense is creating a Google+ Page. This is a great way to build brand awareness and reach out to your customers. To get started, sign in to your Google account and then go to http://www.google.com/+/business/. Click on Create Your Google+ Page. Pick a category relevant to your business. Specify your business name and website URL. Select an additional category to further classify nature of your business. Click on Create button. Give a catchy tag line to your business page. You have a limit of maximum ten words here. Add a profile picture and you are all set.

A quick shout out for a local SEO and Web design business in Glossop, Dark Peak Digital.co.uk which is owned by a partner here, Lyndon Ogden