Understanding & knowing your social media options

Tweeting, Facebooking, Pinning, Oh My!

Social media. It is a blessing and a curse in so many ways. There are a TON of options out there for social media. You can use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, and the list goes on and on. But for many people, it’s trying to decide which ones to use and how. And once you figure that out, you have to decide who’s going to be your social media manager for all these channels. Because you have SO much free time on your hand! That’s where I come in.

It’s definitely an undertaking to manage all these items but it’s necessary. What I always like to tell people is you have to take advantage of all the FREE stuff you have available to you to market your business and organization.

When I first moved to where I am now, the very first thing I did was hop on Facebook and see what was in my area. I bookmarked every club, restaurant and organization I could find. Point being, people use social media all the time and it can very easily be used for any business or hobby.

So how do I use social media?

I’ll give you some quick ideas on how to use them. But I’m always available to help you in more detail. I’ll use the example of a custom cake maker.

Facebook: You can use Facebook to post photos of your cakes and cookies. If you’re having an in-store or in-bakery event, create a Facebook event and invite folks to that. Facebook tabs can also allow for you to go even further and create contests or coupons and even adding video.

Pinterest and Instagram: Both of these are photo driven. Use this to upload photos of your finished products. Other people can favorite them or re-pin them in the case of Pinterest. Instagram also let’s you record quick video as well to upload. Hashtags are amazing!

YouTube or Vine: With as advanced as cell phones are, you can record quick video. In the case of Vine it could be a 6 second snap shot view around a cake you made. Just to give people a quick glance at the product. With YouTube, you can have longer, more detailed video. For example, you could walk people through how to make an icing flower, or whatever you might want that relates to your end product.

Twitter: You can “tweet” out quick updates about products or what you may be doing. For example, “Just finished up making a beautiful 4 layer wedding cake for a client. Turned out great”. Twitter also allows you to add images to your tweets.

These all seem to really be the same.

This is true. They are very similar in many ways. However, the audience may be completely different. Some people only use Pinterest and don’t even look at Facebook. Many teens and students are switching from Facebook and only using Instagram. So you really have to make use of multiple product lines to target all the right audience. So it’s going to take some planning on your part on how to use them.

Got questions? Send me a message and I’ll see what I can do to point you in the right direction.