Week 11 Part A: Marketing with Twitter, LinkedIn, and more...

  When I think about marketing a business with Twitter, LinkedIn, Google for Business, or with a Social Influencer, I feel it's critical to take the time to think through all facets of the business first. My fictitious business of floral wall art is one in which I will be handling all aspects of it. Any marketing social media platform I use will be one that I can comfortably maintain and also complement my business. It's important to devise a strategy for using the platform in order to protect, promote, and preserve your brand.

To me, using Twitter is like bodysurfing. Sometimes you catch a great ride, other times you eat sand, and there are times you don't catch a wave at all. You really need to put forethought into your use of Twitter before you start to use it especially for business marketing. It could be a profitable platform for my floral wall art business as my initial research revealed that a lot of people like to tweet pictures of their new floral wall art along with a shout out to the artist or photographer. The format of short tweets accompanying a partial photo teaser of new work would be easy for me to do. I would need to stay on top of the tweet feeds though to fend off any negativity, and that could be time consuming. I'm really undecided about Twitter's effectiveness for my type of business.

I honestly thought I would not be able to use LinkedIn for my floral wall business, until I did a LinkedIn search for floral photography. The search revealed about five floral photography businesses throughout the United States. Each one had a profile and floral pictures available for purchase. There were about fifteen floral photography business profiles I couldn't access without a paid membership. The upside of using LinkedIn would be that I wouldn't need to be overly concerned about negative reviews. It's unclear if I would receive much traffic to my business site though unless I paid for a membership.

For this class I created my own Google website for Trulyours Designs. At the moment it is quite simplistic with a logo, banner photo, name, and flower pictures with titles. It was free and required no coding on my part. An attractive feature of using Goggle for your business is that they provide a wealth of information and resources to help you launch, promote, and sustain your business. Google is certainly budget friendly, and I feel it would be worth my time and effort. If I did transform my fake business into a real one, I would first review all the Goggle resources and then go about retooling my Trulyours Designs website. 

I honestly do not feel comfortable seeking out social influencers to promote my business. I also feel the niche set of floral wall art is really too small to actively seek out a social influencer. I certainly would welcome an unsolicited post from a social influencer about my work though. If by chance I received positive posts from more than one influencer, I would probably add them to my website. Knockaround sunglasses has a Celebrity section that shows pictures of celebrities wearing their sunglasses. However, their #Knocktags section really supports and promotes their product even more effectively. It's a collection of photos from customers wearing their Knockaround sunglasses. It even has a section featuring dogs wearing their Knockarounds! It doesn't get much cooler than that.

The biggest takeaway I realized from this research is to stay true to your business idea, service, and product. Establish your brand along with your business strategy. Then you can choose the social media marketing platform that will provide the best fit for your business and be one that you can comfortably maintain.