As the amount of time consumers spend on the internet grows, there's good reason for a business to want to jump right onto social media. Having a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter profile is definitely a smart tactic for most businesses, but executing good strategies on social media is seldom done.
If you're a small business trying to build your social media presence, there are three strategic points you should keep in mind that will help make your social efforts valuable to your customer.
Find Your Relevant Audience
Lots of companies make the mistake of trying to get as many fans and followers as they can. While this is definitely attractive, having 1,000 fans who have barely even heard of your brand isn't too helpful.
Connect with your current clients by keeping a 'Follow Us!' Or 'Fan Us!' link in your email's footer. Better yet, you can use email tools like Flowtown or Rapportive to see which social networks your contacts are active on, allowing you tailor specific emails to influencers on specific social platforms.
Additionally, having links to your social presences on your website is another smart thing to do. People who visit your site and are interested in learning more about your company will often check out your latest blog posts, tweets, and status updates to see what kind of relevant information you're sharing. Using a tool like Fan ReTargeting, you can retarget your site's traffic with Facebook Ad units, which is a great way to make your brand memorable while attracting potential customers to your brand's social efforts.
Keep in mind that you don't want to waste an effort on certain social platforms if your audience isn't active on it. Updating your Facebook status three times a day isn't really valuable if your audience doesn't really use Facebook.
Engage Your Audience
So you have a relevant audience connected with your brand on social networks. Now you need to keep them interested! Create tweets and share links that can legitimately help your audience. For example, if you have an audience of athletes, sharing relevant sporting news is something that would engage your audience. Just be sure to always make it interesting. Add personality to your posts by offering a quick opinion before links, or placing a smiley at the end of certain updates.
ALWAYS make sure to answer any questions directed to you via these platforms in a timely manner. On Twitter specifically, retweeting your followers' interesting posts is a great way to engage and activate.
Additionally, you should always be sure to inform your audience of anything going on with your brand. This includes milestones, product launches, and special promotions that you may be running.
Always Stay Alive!
There's nothing worse than having your social presence halt for a week. Having a ghost town presence for a week can definitely hurt your social growth, as current and potential customers don't like being in the dark. You can always use a free tool like HootSuite to schedule tweets and status updates in advanced, and are especially helpful if you have multiple people using multiple company accounts.
Social media is definitely an effective tactic, if used properly. The key word is strategy! Following these three strategic points will help you build your brand as a social resource for your customers within your resources.
Author: Samir Soriano is the Director of Marketing of ReTargeter.