In the modern business world, companies ignore social networking at their peril. People consume social content online these days like they breathe air, using sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest on a continual basis to chat to friends, share information about products, check out the latest trends and more.

Internet users often access their social accounts the moment they get online. In fact, to make the web browsing experience easier and more rewarding, public WiFi providers like Airangel.com have created systems that allow people to access free internet in a host of locations, ranging from cafes to coaches, via their social media accounts.

Given the ubiquitous nature of social channels in cyberspace, they are the perfect places to build brand profiles, promote goods and services and generally communicate with potential customers. Don’t worry if you’re new to this world either. There is no dark art to online business networking. The following guide should give you the basics and help you to get your message out there to the people who count.

Understand your audience

You can’t have a meaningful conversation online without knowing exactly who it is you’re speaking to. So, before you start creating content to share over the web, make sure you have a detailed picture of your target audience. It helps to distinguish individual character profiles by variables like gender, age, profession and interests. Find out which networks these people prefer too. Taking some time to get to grips with this will help you to tailor your campaign.

Synchronise your social accounts

Social media advertising is typically cheaper than traditional marketing channels, but it can be time consuming. This means it’s important to be efficient. To streamline the process, make sure your platforms work together. For example, share your posts across multiple channels, and be sure to incorporate sharing buttons on your posts and pages.

Create engaging content

There’s no point churning out reams of posts if they don’t engage with your target audience. To get a feel for what people read, like and share, take a look at the content that’s already out there. This should give you an idea of the sort of tone you’re aiming for. Meanwhile, don’t be tempted to bombard web users with sales pitch after sales pitch. This breaks social media etiquette and it will quickly turn people off.

To encourage readers to interact with your content, include calls to action at the end of your posts asking readers to comment, like you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter or whatever is relevant to the channels you’re using. You can also reel people in with mentions of special offers and prizes. This is a great way to create a stir on social media.

Listen as well as speak

Don’t fall into the trap of seeing your social channels simply as an opportunity for you to speak. To really make the most of these platforms, you have to listen too. Bear in mind that social listening is a great way to keep tabs on what people are thinking and saying about your brand and your rival operators. Respond to people’s feedback too, even the bad stuff. This can be a good way to turn a negative into a positive.

Measure results and be prepared to adapt

There’s no point in throwing resources at these campaigns if you don’t measure the results. To see how well your efforts are going, track performance data to see which social media channels are driving the most traffic to your site. If you’re disappointed with the figures, it’s probably time to change tack.