How to Use Social Media for Business
If you’re a small business, you have almost certainly heard how the use of social media platforms (e.g. Facebook or Twitter) are important places to both find new potential customers and stay linked to your existing ones. The trap that many businesses fall into is that once they’ve set up their Facebook page, or Twitter account, the novelty soon wears off and they update and less frequently.
It’s not sufficient merely to set up your profile; you should update regularly. Think of your Twitter account, for example, as a ‘radio station’ – it needs to keep ‘broadcasting’!) These suggestions will help you and your business to make more contacts than ever before.
Whatever else you do, avoid the trap of ‘advertising’ on every single post. Don’t keep posting sales pitches, for starters it comes across as desperate (the very WORST impression you can give!), and for another, it will only serve to make your existing followers desert in droves.
Keep your posts which link to the business websites to a handful a week; two, perhaps three will be fine. Don’t forget, you can put a link to your website in the Twitter details on the right, and also in the info tab on your Facebook page. It’s there for all to see – don’t keep pushing it down peoples’ throats. If you’re worried that having a social network account may give others the perception that your business is not entirely professional, don’t be. It’s fine to give a bit of personal information, in fact the business whose social media account is more personal will always succeed over those that give the perception of a faceless company.
It’s also fine to post ‘off topic’; a handful of snippets of information regarding hobbies, facts about your location or even your musical taste or favourite television programme will provide your followers with a more personalised touch; when visitors know it’s a human being they’re dealing with they’re more likely to find you trustworthy. Indeed, it may even entice other talented people to your cause.
The next thing you should remember is the following reciprocal rule: promote others and you will be promoted yourself. You could, for example, post a tweet about an article or blog that you think is applicable to your business or that of your followers; or if you know of a local charity that could do with a plug, go ahead and post the link to their site! Aim to give thanks to new followers personally; a direct message in Twitter is great but you can also answer queries publically using the @ symbol; for example :’yes @John we will be in your area soon’.
This latter approach will be valued by the customer but will also be seen to their followers. A recent Facebook addition was the ability to ‘tag’ another user in a status post in a similar fashion, thus a similar technique can be applied there too.
Both Twitter and Facebook are great for posting testimonials; these have more effect if they do not come from the business itself so one method could be to offer something to your followers for posting such testimonials to publicize your business. Offer a freebie, or a discount on a purchase, and advertise this to your followers. (Remember the earlier rule however; don’t OVER-push this method and avoid tweeting it every half-hour!) When you check back over the subsequent days see what testimonials appear; if you get enough people posting good things then your business will start to increase followers and things will snowball from there.
You may also use Google Trends, or Twitter’s Trending topics to see what searches are most popular on a given day (note: Twitter allows regional Trending topics; selected countries or US cities can be chosen in place of the default Global option). If you find an appropriate topic, include it in your post.
The more relevant your post, the more chance messages from the business will be passed around.
Your business can grow your social media reach and create a sales funnel quickly by following these tips.
Ronnie Soo is an M3 Marketing Consultant at Wealth Masters International and a director at 5th Wise Monkey, a company boasting a diverse range of talent which helps businesses grow from all stages from start-up through to maturity.
For more information please see http://www.5thwisemonkey.com or email at info@5thwisemonkey.com
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