CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) – Most people who start a home-based business frequently end up marketing too little or marketing ineffectively on social media. Mychal Connolly, Chief Marketing Office for the Cambridge Entrepreneur Academy shared tips on how to market your business successfully on social media.How to Successfully Market Your Home-Based Business on Social Media

1. Social – Nobody likes spammers or people who constantly post links and pitch businesses. Remember people love buying stuff but they hate spammy ads. We’re in the social era. You being you will work, if you are interesting. The days of hiding who you are are dying faster than every especially with new live streaming platforms like Meerkat and Periscope. Which leads me to number two.

2. Media – Make sure your social life is something people would embrace on all media: TV, Radio, Magazine, etc. If people wouldn’t tune into you on traditional media… they won’t tune in on social media. Make sure your posts are geared towards a specific demographic. ESPN caters to people who love sports, mostly men. Lifetime caters towards people’s emotions, mostly women. Your post should have a specific target audience in mind.

3. Marketing – Third and final is marketing. Respect and learn the craft of marketing. Just because you’ve watched a few Super Bowl commercials and “know what they did there”, or came up with a “cool marketing concept” that doesn’t make you a marketer. Take time to master marketing. Learn the ins and outs of how it works. Learn what makes your target market tick. Then make them click and buy your stuff.

4. Don’t just share content to share content. Your post, especially when sharing content with a link, should have some benefit to you and your audience. You want to have a buy button, an opt in button or some type of means to market your product or services to the people that clicked your link.

5. Don’t be afraid to pay to play.

Time is money. One of the most time saving ways to make sales on social media, Facebook is perfect for this, is paid ads. With paid ads you can target specific buyers. You don’t need a huge budget, under $100, and you can’t test and find out what works and what doesn’t rather easily. If you find your marketing message and ad works with your test budget, scale it up and scale it out to gain more customers.

So the key to successful social media marketing is really the three step process in the name. The name has it! Social ➡️ Media ➡️ Marketing

Be social. Treat it like main stream media. And have a solid marketing strategy.