If your business isn’t harnessing the power of social media, it’s missing out on a lot of opportunities. Just about everyone with a disposable income is online these days, and most of those people have at least one, if not more social media accounts. Social media can get your business more customers than a giant billboard on the Interstate, yet it costs significantly less. In fact, the only way it really costs anything is if you hire someone to do the work for you.
Despite the fact that social media commerce is such a big deal, I’ve worked with several new businesses that really had no online presence at all. The biggest problem that all of them had was knowing where to start. Social Media Commerce For Dummies
by Marsha Collier not only tells you where to start, but how to make the most of the power of social media for building revenue and increasing customer satisfaction.
Social Media Commerce for Dummies is a great book for those who are launching a new business, trying to increase their presence for an established business, and everyone in between. While it’s aimed towards those looking to sell an actual product or service, it’s also beneficial to freelance writers and bloggers who are looking to sell themselves (uh, not in the “oldest profession” way, you know what I mean!).
The main points in the book revolve around four different aspects of developing a social media commerce strategy. These include:
- Building up your customer base by creating engaging and resourceful social media pages.
- Using those pages to increase customer service, mainly by being on hand to answer questions or predicting questions ahead of time through development of a solid “FAQ” section.
- Deciding which social media networks are best for representing your brand. For example, if your products are highly visual in nature, Pinterest would be a great choice. On the other hand, if you’re trying to market yourself as, say, a medical billing specialist, then Pinterest really isn’t going to do a whole lot for you. Sure, you can create great, informative posts on a blog or something and make cool graphics to promote it, but a business like that would do better on a different network.
- Tracking the results so that you can evaluate your strategies and make changes where necessary.
Social Media Commerce for Dummies takes you through every aspect of increasing your online presence, from researching the best networks to getting your customers to come to you to improving the overall experience through different applications. It even has suggestions for building a stronger following.
As with all For Dummies books, it’s written in a manner that is easy to follow, with strategies that can be implemented by anyone who has the time to work on it. A strong social media presence doesn’t happen overnight, but this book is definitely the right first step in getting there.
