Are you a small business owner? If you want to develop your online presence, you should consider joining social networks. Keep reading to find out more about social media marketing.

Create some accounts on different social networks. Facebook and Twitter are a good place to start but keep in mind that your target audience might be using different social networks. Consider joining Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr or any other site that a non-negligible percentage of your customers uses regularly. Do not hesitate to have your customers answer to surveys about their favorite social networks. Join a site if you believe your customers use it and wait to see some results before you decide to use one of these sites for a major marketing campaign such as launching a new product or organizing a contest.

List your businesses on sites such as Yelp or Foursquare. Create a detailed profile, add some pictures of your products and your store and share some information about your discounts. These sites allow users to write reviews of the businesses they visit and let their friends know where they went shopping. Listing your business on these sites will allow your customers to share details about their favorite products with their friends and give you an idea of what people think of your store.

Let your customers know about your social media marketing campaign. You should talk about it with the people who come in your store and mention it on your website and in your newsletter if you use these marketing methods. Find an incentive to get people to subscribe to your social media updates, for instance, by giving them a chance to win a free product or offering a discount. People will subscribe to your updates if they perceive your campaign as valuable.

Set some precise goals for your campaign. You should, for example, plan on generating a certain number of sales through social networking. Having a concrete goal will help you find a direction for your campaign. A lot of business owners join social networks and start sharing updates without really thinking ahead and end up not generating any sales through their social media marketing campaign. Do not make this mistake and try coming up with a plan of action after giving yourself a few weeks to familiarize yourself with the different features of the social networks you joined.

Use social networks to promote your products. Find an original way to present your products while keeping your audience interested. Take some pictures of your products and create a series of videos to demonstrate your products if possible. Pictures and videos will be easier to notice for your subscribers and more people will share this content with their friends. And keep in mind that not all your updates should be about your products. Keep your audience interested by sharing some links to useful articles and tips related to your products.

Social media marketing can do a lot for your business but you need to approach this method with some clear goals in mind. Apply these tips and do more research and social networking before you define your goals.