SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: 101

     What is the easiest way to market your new blog or business?  Social Media.   Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter reach millions of people everyday.  If you don't believe it just look around you.  Everyone seems to be on some sort of device "checking in".  If your house is like mine, you can have the whole family in the same room, each on their own device.  I even saw an ad on television where a young man had to send his girl a text in a coffee house to get her to look at him so he could propose!!  

     Social Media is very similar to "word of mouth" in that as your blog/business is seen by more people, they in turn send you more people. A TV ad for shampoo from when I was younger summed it up with...."you tell 2 friends and they tell 2 friends and so on and so on...."

     I have covered Facebook in previous posts, any business or blog should have its own Facebook page.  You can promote that page on Facebook to reach beyond your core of friends and family for as little as $5.00 a day.  Like any other advertising, the more you invest the more return you will see.

     Pinterest and Instagram are 2 that I have not personally tried.  I understand they are for posting images and since my blog is currently short on images, I have not tried them.  If I were an artist or crafter I would pursue this avenue to get images of my work in front of potential buyers. If you have tried these I would like to hear from you as not all my readers are bloggers and they might benefit from your experience.

     Twitter has been my most successful social media so far.  I have been able to interact directly with other folks like me and been able to bring much more traffic to my blog.  The down side of this is that I have been spending more and more time "Tweeting" and less time working on my blog.  I am looking into many ways of doing both but have no answers yet.  When I have my solution I will share it. For now I have to work on good old fashioned "time management".