Week #12 Using Other Social Media Tools

What four additional online marketing tools do you believe could be important to the growth of your business?

Google+  I think Google + is similar to Facebook, however, I think there is a different group that follows it.  So I think if you are on Facebook you also need to have a presence on Google+.  Google pulse had a bad rap when it first launched but that seems to be changing.  It’s now the second largest social network with over 340 million users.

Yelp  If you are a relatively new business trying to get yourself noticed, yelp offers a great place to start.  A lot of people look to yelp for help in deciding what business they should use for a service that maybe they haven’t used before.  People want to hear what others have to say about their experiences with a particular business.  I use Yelp all of the time.  Be careful, it can backfire on you if you aren't good at what you do or you don’t get along with people.  A bad Yelp rating can put you out of business in a hurry.

LinkedIn  LinkedIn is really a social media site for businesses to connect.  If you want to do business with other businesses and professionals, it’s the place to be.  They have also developed marketing tools to help in marketing to other users on the site.  One complaint I hear about LinkedIn is the amount of email that you get.  That can be minimized by changing the frequency of emails.  All in all, you get a lot of bang for little dinero.

YouTube  YouTube is a great way to get your message in front of a lot of people.  If you watch something that’s engaging, you’re likely to share it with a friend.  In today’s world, many people would rather watch a video than to have to read a large chunk of material.  It will also help people stay on your website longer.  However, it does take some effort to create a video.  I think it really depends on whether the content is engaging.

I think that all four of these social media tools would be worthwhile for me to use.  It really comes down to how much time you have to devote to them.   I think that you need to set limits on how much time you work on them each week.