Marketing Your Business - How to Start a Home-based Computer Repair Business - page 142

For anyone who is trying to stay connected via the social networks, Twitter should not be
neglected. If you are new to this media application, you will discover that you can change
the way you communicate with others in one hundred and forty characters or less. It's im-
portant to remember that when using this social-media site, it can become quite addicting.
1. Twitter is simple to use. There are many apps for Twitter, which makes posting from
your smartphone an easy task.
2. You can follow some interesting people. There are a lot of important and relevant people
on Twitter, and you can read what they are doing via a “feed.” Be interactive with these
people, and they will follow your posts on Twitter. When you have people following you,
that's a good thing!
3. You can interact with your customers. It's true—some of your customers may prefer to
communicate via Twitter, so this means that you're going to want to embrace it.
Now link your Twitter account with your Facebook account, and when you post a new
tweet, it will also post to your Facebook page. That's being social, active, and current . . .
and that's the key to these social-media sites.
Traditional Marketing Ideas
You know all about traditional marketing ideas—they are the marketing ideas that we grew
up with. Before the Internet, there was a standard for marketing that can still work today.
The key is to pay the right price for the traditional marketing piece. Although it may seem
that traditional marketing is dead, that's simply not true.
Newspapers
There are still some newspapers making profits firing up the printing presses each night
and hand-delivering stacks of papers all over town. Advertising rates have fallen, and you
can find the right deals. You may be able to negotiate a great rate on flyer inserts, so you
can have full-color ads that might make a better impression than the standard black-and-
white ads we saw as kids.
Most print newspapers have online versions too, so you can capitalize on a single price for
both versions if you negotiate right. Remember that nowadays more people read newspa-
pers online than in print, but you don't want to exclude those diehard paper readers from
knowing about you and your services.
Direct-Mail Programs
This is an interesting marketing program that can yield great success. There are programs
offered by the United States Postal Service and other third parties that can deliver your full-