How To Grow Your Equestrian Business Using Social Media And Blog Content
Love it or loathe it the internet is here to stay, with trends changing every year in the technical world and with social media holding a firm foot in the stirrup, especially when growing an equestrian business. Social media is vital to increase the visibility of your equestrian brand and companies that have a lacklustre online profile are getting left behind.
Why Is Social Media Integral To My Equestrian Business?
Social media is the fastest way to raise your product profile to an equestrian audience. Building your brand online takes time, with work and dedication, but you will be rewarded for your efforts by a rise in sales and interest in your company. Trust is important in any business and the best way to gain this is by giving customers easy online access to your company and the services it provides. Creating profiles on the top social media websites creates a voice and also a face for your company, which will give more incentive to trust your equestrian business.
How Do I Promote My Equestrian Business Through Social Media?
Getting the content and quantity right is key to grabbing your equestrian audience when promoting your business through your social media pages. This needs to be a careful mix of promotion of your products, testimonials with product reviews, but not over egging your brand to bore the followers swiping through the news feed!
Talk about current affair topics, support equestrian sport and post that funny picture of a horse pulling a stupid face, with a quirky quote. This engages your audience, encouraging likes, shares/retweets, pushing your brand out to the equestrian public, who are your potential clients.
Blogging In The Equestrian Industry
Blogging (short for web logging) is becoming a very versatile tool in the equestrian world. The equestrian industry seems to be embracing this way of blogging to promote their equestrian businesses, competitions or chosen equine area of expertise. Most websites these days have a blog attached, which can then be linked to social network pages such as Facebook and Twitter.
Some top equestrian companies are now using blog pages to raise their companies profile or employing professional riders to write about their career through their websites. All the tops riders, especially through the competition season, blog, tweet or post about their successes and failures, these days. Rather than wait for a magazine article to come out in print, this is now the quick and fast way to get their equestrian news out there as well raising their profile. You can use this same tool, within your equestrian business as a rapid way of getting your equestrian product or service out to the customers you are looking for.
Why Will Blogging Help My Equestrian Business?
When people are looking for a product or a service, the majority will turn to the internet and search for information through a search engine. Blogging is about having conversations in a public space, speaking through writing good content about a topic. This can be relating to a business service, product or just a good experience which is equine related. Or even a bad problem.
It is a great platform to showcase an equestrian product or service, that you are trying to promote, using links within the post direct to your website. Thousands of blogs are started each day, with the majority failing to be kept up to date. The key is consistency and continuity of having your brand forefront on a news feed on social media pages. If your topics are being exhausted, then look to current equestrian news and give your followers your opinion and views.
Make sure your posts are also visually interesting. Use images of your products, video clips or podcasts. The more appealing to the eye, the more potential clients will stop, click and read. So keep your blogging up to date and at least post an article once a week to keep your clients interested in your business and brand!
Do I Need To Employ A Marketing Expert To Promote My Equestrian Business?
Marketing in the equine industry is growing, with many turning to the professionals to help them through the minefield of social media and SEO (search engine optimization). Most marketing businesses can help you with as much or as little help as you need to get your business noticed in the equestrian world. Even some advice and assistance in getting you started in the world of social media, many businesses can then forge their own way socially in working with their own content once they have the confidence to actually do their own marketing.
Howevere it is time consuming to keep your brand out there. So if this is a struggle for you, then bringing in knowledgeable staff, to promote your business, may be the answer. With experts on board, they will steer your company forward to an expanding equestrian audience, using tools such as posting regularly on social media, writing blog posts that are of genuine interest to your clients and making sure your brand is forefront, through the top search engines. They will guide you with changing trends in social media marketing, keeping your company top of the social media game.
Top Five Tips On Blogging Relating To Your Equestrian Business
Think you’d like to give blogging a go but aren’t sure how it’d fit with your equine business? Here are a few ideas…
Equestrian Products:
If you are retailing equestrian products, online or in store, then you can write about why your products might be more appealing to your audience than the many other products that are out there. Explain and show why they are better.
Put a call out for some equestrians to review your product, for free and post their testimonials. Ensure that any special offers or discounts are posted often in social media or any new products that are being launched are given airtime, through your page and website. Make sure you use plenty of images of your products.
Ensure that any special offers or discounts are posted often in social media or any new products that are being launched are given airtime, through your page and website. Make sure you use plenty of images of your products.
Veterinary Services/Equine Therapists:
Keep your audience interested in stories about your practice, whether they are successful treatments or even sad cases. Post pictures and tell the stories of your clients. People love reading about how a horse or pony has been saved from a horrible injury or survived through innovative treatment.
Show images of you/your staff using the latest equipment, treating horses and x-rays, with wounds and foreign objects that you or your company’s expert veterinary team have treated and fixed!
Equestrian Artists and Photographers:
Visual impact is key with this line of equestrian business. Show stages of your artwork from the first etchy sketchings, to applying colour to the piece and then to the final finished masterpiece! Share your photographs from a recent session and tell readers about your clients.
Offering a chance for a person to win a personalised portrait of their horse or a photography session with them is a brilliant advertising tool, to get your equestrian business out there. Detail any exhibitions that people can visit showing your works.
Farriers:
With foot problems, a major factor in horse health, showing your work in this area is vital to promote your services and will be a fascinating read for most horse owners. Again, be visual, using photographs and explaining the problems you deal with and how the horses have become sound through your expertise.
Trainers and Livery Facilities:
Write about problem solving in horse care and schooling. Use images and speak about the success stories of your past students and horses that you have brought on through your training. Give the audience your top tips, whether that’s for in the saddle or dealing with horses on the ground. If your business is livery based then write about what has been happening at your yard, each week. Pick a horse with character and showcase a weekly diary about their antics. Be honest and add humour to your posts. Share with your audience the highs and lows running a livery yard can bring and your tips for making a yard run smoothly.
If you need help with promoting your equestrian or countryside business through social media, then contact Haynet
