Social media strategies for entrepreneurs need to be a lot different than social media strategies employed by, let say, Old Spice.
If you are an independent marketer or have a small team, you just may not have the time or money to hire hilarious actors for a YouTube campaign that generates millions of views within a few hours.
When it comes to social media, a lot of people are looking for the big home run, where they could be getting a greater return on a series of small, simple methods.
Here are some strategies you can employ that are easy to do, proven, and inexpensive.
1.
Improve your site.
It's amazing to me how many absolutely crappy websites have "share me!" widgets all over them.
Why would your visitor want to share a lousy site? Before you invest any time or money in social media strategies, make sure your website is worth sharing! 2.
Include share options on your site.
If your site is good, and worthy of people sharing, you must make it easy for them.
Tweetmeme is a great blog plugin to create viral re-tweets of blog posts, Facebook has great sharing tools, and there are a lot of great social bookmark sharing tools as well.
3.
Brand the "big three.
" YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are the biggest social sites going.
It's worth taking the time to brand your YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter page.
It's easy to create a customized page or channel on all three of these sites.
4.
"Like This.
" This could go in step two, but it's so powerful I am breaking it out.
Install the Facebook "Like" button on all of your websites and blogs! You may have to beg your friends and family to go "Like" it to get some numbers, but once people see others Liking your site, they will too.
This one tip alone could lead to significant traffic and sales from Facebook.
So there's four very simple, free methods you can employ to improve your social marketing strategy in a hurry.