The importance of social media marketing for small businesses Essay

share information and interact with each other. The social media site is generally considered the most useful for marketing small businesses. Business owners can easily create business accounts on the site that are separate from their personal profiles to enable them to build a public business presence online. Business professionals need to consider the privacy settings that work best for them in order to separate their personal life from their business.
The site can be used by business people for marketing through a personal business profile or a public fan page for the same business. While users have to send friend requests for the personal account and groups, they can easily follow a fan page without the need for a request. Both types of accounts can be used to share content such as videos, images, promotions and presentations across different networking sites through integrated tools and features on Facebook. The business owner can also create awareness, interact directly with followers and announce events on the site to create a buzz and promote the business brand. The entrepreneur can also utilize apps available on the site such as conference calls, business cards, Circle-Up and free telephone to improve the business interactions with clients.
A major limitation to the use of Facebook for marketing purposes is the possibility of breach of privacy. When a business person with a personal account opens an account for business, it is possible that they will have both business fans and personal friends crossing over on both accounts. This could result in the sharing of personal content such as family photos on the business profile. To prevent these occurrences, the owner of the profile should take time to set the privacy settings on both accounts to ensure a separate online interaction between their personal life and the business.
Twitter. This is a free blogging platform that allows users to sharing a message with anybody at a maximum of 140 characters. The site has about 271 million users which accounts for 18% of internet users (Taylor). About 50% of unique visitors are aged under 35 years. Twitter offers business people with a platform for networking and communicating with new and existing clients. The site provides the user with the ability to join, follow friends, share content and to subscribe to an unlimited number of Twitter feeds. Developers on the site are also constantly providing tools that give the user the ability to customize Twitter feeds in a creative way to suit personal preferences. Business people could utilize the various tools and features available on the site to reach a wide audience and to promote their brand to a specific market. Tools such as hashtag create categories and topics on the site that bring people of similar interests together and make it easier for businesses to track conversations about certain brands.
A major drawback on the use of Twitter for marketing a business brand is its complicated culture. Many new users find it difficult to adapt to the rules