The era of social media has not only enhanced the effectiveness of networking among individuals but also as a great tool for business and sales. The era of the internet brought about new frontiers in business advertising and promotion with the earliest forms of social networking being by means of emails and web pages.

Social media includes websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn and more. Various social media platforms have their modes of operation and interacting mechanisms which enhance their ability to interconnect people and businesses. Using social media for business allows the business to increase their visibility in the increasingly digital world by allowing the business to appear on the page as its own entity.

The business managers can then engage the fans in interesting discussions and topics while promoting their products. One of the key features that was enabled using social media for business' is the incorporating of a commenting slot that allows the subscribers, otherwise called fans, to give their comments on a particular product of topic of discussion on the page. This gives the business insight into how customers are responding to a particular product or service offered by the business. This then translates to action from the business to improve or modify their products accordingly.

Another key feature that greatly enhances the use of social media as a business promotion tool is the inclusion of like buttons which allow the readers or the fans to be receiving news or updates on the activated pages. This is essential to the business to track the effectiveness of their initiatives to the audience. The number of acknowledgements received is a direct indicator of following, hence the size of the audience. The ability of most social media sites to track the activity of traffic on their pages serves to gauge the sentiment of the market in regards to a particular product or service offered. This has enabled the rapid increase in using social media for business promotion and marketing. The social media manager or administrator is able to track the source of customers and what interested them in the website and determine an appropriate response.

While initiating a business, using social media for business can assist the business to achieve certain objectives such as getting a constant flow of traffic to your website, creating awareness of the brand, facilitating a unique identity of the brand, allowing conversion of web visits to sales, and even communication to the visitors on any upcoming promotions for the business. While incorporating social media in the business strategies, it’s recommended to ensure superb content that should be as informative as possible, as well as constantly updated to ensure return visits and new visits generated by search engines. Creation of blog sites for the business is also a strategic technique of using social media for business.

The business blog spot serves as a great access point where the customers get insight on the company products, new product releases, and even current operations of the business. While adding content to the blog or media page, it is imperative for a thorough key word research to be done to deliver interesting content to the audience.