[This is the first in an occasional series of guest blogs that I am sharing from experts in different fields - if you want to guest on my blog send me a mail]

Social media has become almost a necessity when it comes to communicating with your audience, fans and customers. As more and more people turn to social media for entertainment and to follow their favourite companies, brands and celebrities it’s critical that you don’t get left behind. Not participating in social media will be like almost not having a website in the near future. Almost unthinkable!

Many a SEO Company are offering to integrate your business socially, some are good and some have simply no idea. I would suggest looking at your company’s own strategy before choosing any provider should you go down this route.

Social media is all about connecting and communicating with your audience, it’s not enough to create a Twitter account and then think that doing a few tweets will be enough. Your fans want to hear from you regularly, possibly once a day or more. People that are part of your network are generally interested in what you have to say or offer and want to hear more. We’re talking about real fans now, not a million pointless people who only followed you, because you followed them.

By constantly keeping in touch with your audience, you create a “momentum” and a loyal following who will support you and give you valuable feedback. Should you connect with them in the right way they will become the most powerful PR machine you could ever imagine which could make your business explode with sales or enquires or implode should there be a lot of criticism.

The trick to successful social media is effort in creating and maintaining your network and offering things that are of interest. Do not try to “market the hell” out of your network and fans, as all you’ll succeed in doing is losing them.

Social media is an incredibly powerful tool which can help you connect with your customers and fans on a personal level, almost never before possible. This tight communication reaps huge rewards in terms of customer loyalty, brand awareness and building. Social media should be embraced to grow your business as not participating can actually do more harm than good.

This article was written by Christopher Angus – An award winning Internet Marketer. You can get in touch with Christopher Angus here or read his blog here.

As always - do you have a view? Do you like guest blogs? Are you creating communities of trust around your brand? Share a comment below!

Justin

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