The Fediverse demographic skews very heavily away from anything that smells even remotely like promotion or sales (and especially AI).

Your best bet, and possibly the only meaningful way, to leverage the Fediverse as a business is to use it for thought leadership. Write, post, comment about specific meaningful things your business is centered around. Do not promote, do not use contextual links, do not direct people to your website for more info.

This isn't a place for direct lead gen at scale. It's a place to accumulate like minded people, and work towards those people talking about you inside their own networks.

It's the long game, recognition and association; not engagement and monetization.

the best way they should use the fediverse is to use bluesky so we don't have to see their ads disguised as "content".

Social media is for humans to socialize. Not for businesses to find customers.

They should leave it alone. I don’t want to see ads everywhere or worse, ads disguised as content. Reddit has been going to shit due to, in part, the rampant commercialization of the platform.

If a post puts out a call asking for a product that your SB can provide, feel free to post that you have the answer. Beyond that, don’t inundate us with attempts to see your product.

Edit: That said, I do agree with the other commenter who says be an easy-to-contact support account.

You work with model train products it seems, so good-faith, non-advertising participation in such communities is the best way to engage. That’ll do more for your branding, reputation, and business profits that shoehorning ads in.

Don't.

KEEP THE FEDIVERSE CLEAN! NO LITTERING!

Best way business can use the fediverse is to go away.

don't.

fediverse is not an opportunity tap.

if I see any advertising on any of my social platforms I add the company to my blacklist and avoid them as much as I can.

Offer public support for whatever they sell.

It's "businesses," by the way.

Only thing not really mentioned in the other comments are Pixelfed and PeerTube. Again you gotta make genuine stuff not ads but if you put at least some effort in the videos and post semi regularly (and ideally use your own instance) you'll be top in whatever niche you choose to highlight your business with. I can't say the garden tending would make great business sense (it won't bring you many new customers) but if the work you do is your passion, its another outlet to share it. Its also not bad to have your own (labeled) ad channel (on your instance), archives can bring nostalgia / meme material, but local only, and don't boost them.

I don't think it'd be bad to have your own threadiverse and microblogging platform instances for support and slice of life type stories, but that's for interacting with existing customers and fans, not for gaining new ones. I'd caution interacting outside of your instance in that space unless pinged / mentioned directly, even more carefully than you would in other socials.

The best way is to use in a way that gives, not takes. So any ideas of advertising or promoting - forget about it. Creating a community or maintaining a Mastodon presence for support contact might be about the only thing you can do that's not going to get you eviscerated.

Most of us are here to get away from the bullshit. Please don't bring in more bullshit.

We work in it. Created FedID and use it for identity management.

We also use Ghost for our blog.

Why on earth would a business owner waste time trying to leverage such a small and niche platform? Even Facebook and Instagram feel like more trouble than it's worth. Less than 10% of my customers have found me via social media.

Run your own stuff to maintain control and duplicate what you do with the big boys so folks don't need to go to them to find it.

How do people feel about support comms? We already have a comm for Google Pixel, what if Google officially took over the comm and offered support there?

A lot of companies, unfortunately, offer support on Reddit. I'd much rather find questions and answers here on Lemmy, instead of having to visit Reddit.

I'd tread lightly, and be very thoughtful about if and how to deploy.

If the business is niche, I'd consider finding the instance that best aligns with the business, and then check the temperature there.

If the business is or was promoting and marketing their business on xitter then it could make sense for them to try the same on a Mastodon instance account.

I'm not sure if it's really "worth" it for a small business to maintain a presence on Mastodon but I guess it's an option.. remember that small businesses have limited payroll and headcount, it might not make sense to spend time marketing somewhere that has a smaller audience.

there is no money to be done on the fediverse

people here are sensible to influencers, ads, etc… Like at the beginning of the Internet. They hate it a lot lot more than people on youtube, tiktok or facebbok even reddit.

This is a place for non-commercial sharing. At least for now.

As you may have noticed, it's best to avoid Lemmy because there's a loud group of users with extreme political and economical views who will devote their morning to attack your post instead of simply moving on.

You may have more success on Mastodon where there are lots business accounts with thousands followers and everyone is happy to follow or ignore you without so much drama.