Social media has become a powerful tool for small businesses, and using social media marketing can definitely enhance your brand. Social media communities are groups of people interacting, sharing thoughts and opinions, people with the ability to influence and mobilize each other through social media platforms. However, social media marketing isn’t only about how people influence each other with what they say online. People are also inclined to simply observe what others do online. Thus, if you would like customers to mimic a certain type of behavior, be certain to make that behavior highly visible on your social media sites. Humans both listen to and imitate those whom we admire.
So how can you use social media to enhance your brand? Social media is being utilized more and more as a means of uniting people in the causes which they support throughout the world. As a business, choosing a cause that is in alignment with the values of your brand can actually enrich your business. Not only are you supporting a worthy cause with your sponsorship, you are also engendering positive press with your associates, your customers, and your potential customers. Causes have expansive appeal. They have the potential to gain much larger audiences than your business might normally have because people want to talk about important social concerns.
Here are two awesome examples of social media marketing avenues that can help you be a better corporate citizen.
Causes
Causes is an online campaigning platform that allows you to choose a cause, contribute to it, and track how many people choose to also support that cause after they see your contributions or after they receive an invitation from you to contribute to the cause. You can join Causes using your facebook account or your email account, and you can share your Causes campaigns or posts on facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin. If you’re interested in causes, check out their website here: https://www.causes.com/
Oxfam
Oxfam International is a confederation of seventeen organizations which work together in more than ninety countries fighting against poverty. They have a presence on many social media networks, including facebook and Twitter. One of the more interesting ideas is their Oxfam Unwrapped program. You choose a gift from the Oxfam Unwrapped online catalogue, and Oxfam sends you or the recipient of your choice a personalized gift card, and your donation becomes a gift for impoverished people. When this program was launched, the fact that you could buy a goat for an individual in Darfur really got people’s attention. Social media networks were buzzing about Oxfam, goats, and Darfur. If you would like to learn more about Oxfam, you can check out their website here: http://www.oxfam.org/
Looking for a unique gift to give someone special this Valentine’s Day? Both of these organizations can help you give a wonderful gift that will not only help those in need, it will also help you become a better corporate citizen and enhance the perception of your business simultaneously.
