No, of course you don’t have to promote your business on social media. But even if you hate it, you should use it! Why? Because almost everybody has at least one social media account, and many have accounts on multiple networks. It’s how people keep in touch these days, and communication via social media has become even more main stream than email.

Social media isn’t about directly advertising; it’s about building relationships and trust with your clients and potential clients. It’s important to create and contribute to conversations, share useful tips and share your blog articles. Give people a reason to ‘Know, Like and Trust’ you, and be consistent.

If you’re not actively using social media, you are missing out on a big opportunity to network and put yourself in front of your ideal clients. Not only that, but if you impress your fans/followers/connections, they may share your content and status updates with their friends, allowing you to reach many more people.

Ideally, it would be great to have your presence everywhere, on every social network, but that may not be necessary, depending on your business. You want to be where your potential clients are hanging out and spending time.

• If you’re targeting business and corporate professionals, you may only need a LinkedIn profile. It may be harder to find and connect with those people on Facebook or Twitter.

• If you’re targeting parents or young adults, you’ll generally have better luck on Facebook, Instagram and maybe Twitter than you would on LinkedIn.

• If you have a very visual business (eg. Food industry, fashion, design, flowers), you would definitely want to consider Pinterest, Instagram Facebook.

• Studies have shown Google Plus (G+) users to be 70% male and primarily of the technology profession.

• There is conflicting information on Twitter user statistics, but it is popular amongst businesses and celebrities because of the ease of self-promotion, and is popular amongst young men.

• If you are able to produce short videos (of you, basic training, promotion, etc.), YouTube is a valuable social network for any business, especially because videos do so well in search engine rankings.

The biggest thing is to narrow down your niche, research your ideal clients and find out what their preferred social network is.

If you hate social media with a passion or don’t use it often enough, you should probably avoid Twitter. With Twitter, so many people follow thousands of accounts, so to stand out and get your short message seen, you need to be posting very regularly throughout the day.

With Facebook pages and LinkedIn, you can get by with posting once a day. With Pinterest, you can pin once a day as well, but you probably won’t! Pinterest is so addicting that you’ll also be sharing all of the cool pins that everybody else is sharing!

Social networking doesn’t have to be stressful! There are many ways you can make it fun, but if it just plain stresses you out or takes up too much time, you can easily outsource that activity to a Virtual Assistant or Social Media Manager!

I offer packages including social media account setup for those who need a social media presence, as well as social media content creation packages and Boost Your Online Visibility Packages. Click here to learn more or click below to set up a 30-minute Complimentary Discovery Session.