Using social media to market your business: 

The Basics

Social media are internet services that let you interact with others and share and create content through online communities.

Social media present great marketing opportunities for businesses of all sizes. You can use social media to:

• promote the name of your brand and business
• tell customers about your goods and services
• find out what customers think of your business
• attract new customers
• build stronger relationships with existing customers.

Social media marketing has many advantages:

• broad reach – social media can reach millions of people all around the world
• ability to target particular groups – many forms of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) allow businesses to target specific groups, often in particular locations
• free or low-cost – many forms of social media are free for business, and paid options are usually low-cost
• personal – social media allow you to communicate on a personal basis with individual customers and groups
• fast – you can quickly distribute information to many people
• easy – you don’t need high-level skills or computer equipment to participate in social media. The average person with a standard computer should have no difficulty.