Friday 25 September 2015

Getting Started with Social Media for Your Small Business

post thumbnail

Social media is the new driving force behind a majority of the marketers to promote their business. Competition is tough, and getting a wide and loyal customer base is quite an overwhelming task. Social media is only going to grow in the coming years. If you are not marketing on it, then you are most likely missing a large chunk of the pie and letting your competitors having a field day. By the time you realize this, it will be too late and the best time to get started is now.

The question to ask here is: if you are looking to adding new customers, how are you going to add it?

The simplest answer that comes to your mind is stealing them away from your customers. Initially, this may not seem the best way to move forward, but it is the only way to take leaps and strides in a short period of time.

1. Listen to the rumor mills

They may not always turn out to be true, but you should always lend at least an ear to them. Attend the regular community dinners and events and keep an ear on the ground. It is crucial to know your enemy’s strengths and weaknesses and exploit them at the right time. Social media also plays a very important role as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. are very important sources for these information.

2. Poaching through LinkedIn

Regularly check the Linked In profile of your competitors and see who they are connected to. This is a pretty easy way to check out which customers can be targeted. Additionally, Linked In profiles can also be used to poach the best performing employees of your competitor. After identifying the customers who you want to target, approach them and lure them to your business and let them know how you are much better.

3. Don’t hesitate to spend some money

Keywords are open to buy to get more prospects clicking on a website. Getting the right keywords ensures that your website is exposed to the highest number of prospect clients.

Another thing to wonder about is what exactly you can offer a customer to get them to jump ship to your company or business. It will cost you some money, but that should be compensated by the growing business that they bring.

Adding infographics, video content and better optimization to your content can also help in improving your business.

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ are some of the prime networks that every company, big or small, young or established need to have an active presence on. It is absolutely inexcusable for any business that want to thrive to not be tweeting!

Once you optimize your social channels for success, you will convert visitors to customers apart from quality consumer service, luring visuals and quality content.

In conclusion, here are some of the social media strategies that you should develop and stick to.

1.    Have a game plan and stick to it

Investigate how active your competitors are, and then create the adequate benchmark for yourself. Be active, but be careful to not overdo it. Take the help of social media managing platforms like Hootsuite, TweetDeck etc. to help schedule posts and tweets on your social feeds, access performance analytics.

2.    Treat each medium as an individual entity

Each social channel has and has to be treated as a separate entity. You have to optimize content according to the features of that channel and develop strategy according to that.

3.    Immerse yourself in customer service

A customer who posts a query on your social media timeline must get an adequate response within a respectable time frame. Otherwise, the dissatisfied customer can cause a lot of harm to your business and reputation. On the flip side, a timely and qualitative response can add lots of good will to your brand and enhance its reputation thereby spiking your business.

Ensure that a first responder is assigned to post and monitor each channel that your brand has a profile on.

Lastly, always be creative and interactive. Use giveaways, personality and a sense of humor to engage followers and convert them from just visitors to shoppers and buyers. Organize regular competitions to ensure maximum interaction between the company and your followers.

Always develop a vision keeping in mind the long term benefits. Attracting new customers who are currently giving revenues to your competitor is all about offering a better deal or an overall experience that what they are currently receiving and at a substantially lower rate than your competitor.

However, getting and poaching new customers is not enough, you will have to develop and retain a huge base of loyal customers and this is where your social media strategy comes in handy.



from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1Vf3Fnt via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1R6Mkwi

No comments:

Post a Comment