We recently asked our audience whether or not you engaged in social media to promote your business. While we did not have a significant amount of response to be able to call this statistically sound, we did have enough to set a minimum benchmark for the audience. A benchmark is your starting point, after all.
The results:
68% of the participants use social media to promote their business
68% use social media to receive/source information for business purposes
So it seems that the people who use it for one part of their business use it for all of their business. We then asked what Social Media Channels are used for gathering information relevant to running your business and:
53% use Facebook
42% use Twitter
68% use LinkedIn
5% use Pinterest
Based on the results of the survey, it appears that our audience is fairly engaged in social media, which leads to the title of the article. What is a #hashtag for anyway? For those who don't know, "Hashtags are a way for social media users to tag their posts with keywords, which in turn make them easier for social networks to organize and users to search" according to an article written by Michael Patterson of Sprout Social. You can read his article here, which spells it out pretty clearly.
If you attended QuickBooks Connect (#qbconnect) last week, then you most likely heard "include #qbconnect in your tweets". Why? Simply put, by including #qbconnect in your social media activities you helped promote the event across social media and you became part of the conversation. Who does that benefit? It obviously benefits Intuit and the event, but it benefits you because you can be a part of the conversation and can be found by others who are interested in the topic.
With that said, we have been remiss in strategically leveraging social media to grow Intuitive Accountant, but we are in the process of making our approach to social media much more strategic. With that said, I'd like to encourage you to follow us on Twitter @IntuitiveActnt, like our Facebook Page and to join us on LinkedIn.
I know this post is pretty basic and simple, so feel free to add your comments below to make this article more valuable to our audience if you have a particular interest and expertise in social media. We would also like to hear from you if you have used social media to significantly impact your business or your client's business.