Social media can be a great tool when trying to lure clients to your business in this digital age. Granted, wading into the fast-moving flow of social media can be daunting to a small business owner with very little time on their hands. Here are tips that can help you ease through.
1. Offer A Peek Behind The Scenes.
Offering a sneak preview of new products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide critical feedback to help smooth the launch. Posts photos of new products on sites like Flickr and invites comments from customers.
2. Demonstrate What Your Company Does.
Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you to express your company’s value proposition beyond words. To show just how powerful his company’s products are, create a series of videos showing them at work.
3. Put Your Website’s Content To Work.
Help spread the word by encouraging visitors to share content they enjoy. One way to promote the sharing of your site’s content is to install a widget, such as AddThis, that automates linking to popular sites.
4. Be Careful What You Say About Others.
Name calling is one of the lowest tricks in the book. While recounting negative experiences with others won’t necessarily lead to a court battle, it’s best to steer clear of name-calling.
5. Interact With Visitors.
Just putting up a blog or a Facebook fan page won’t do much good if visitors sense the flow of conversation only goes one way. Not participating in comments is a surefire way to kill a community.
6. Don’t Create A Stand-in For Yourself.
With all the other tasks required within your company, it’s tempting to outsource managing your social media or even to try automating the process, that can easily backfire. Your online contacts can think its spam.
7. Reward Customer Loyalty.
Through social media, companies can not only run promotions more frequently than coupons in the mail will permit but also devise more whimsical and engaging campaigns. Send out daily promotional offers.
8. Make Amends With Dissatisfied Customers.
Once you come across an angry Twitter update from a customer who is not happy about a product or service they received, resolved the issue in a matter of minutes. Best of all, you can be able to catch the complaint after working hours and prevent negative word of mouth.
9. See Where Your Customers Are.
A growing number of social networks are designed specifically for users on the go, and some, such as the mobile application Foursquare, offer tools specifically for businesses. Frozen dessert chain Tasti D-Lite, for instance, uses Foursquare to gather data on how many people visit its locations and send promotional offers to frequent customers.
10. Find Potential Customers.
A quick keyword search can help you find prospective customers who may not be aware of your company but could nonetheless benefit from your product or service.
