For those small businesses that still think Social Media is not for them, it’s time to wake up.
If your prospective customers expect to find you on Facebook and Twitter, then hadn’t you better be there?
If they can’t find you, but can find a competitor, who’s going to get the business?
Most small businesses start out ‘doing’ social media by posting lots of ‘sales’ type messages.
Then wonder why people don’t respond. Guess what? People go on social media sites to be social!
Obviously you can sometimes post about your products, especially when you have special offers.
What are you going to do with Social Media? Have you got both a Social Media policy and strategy?
- Have you clear guidelines for employees?
- Do they know what they can and can’t post to their own SM profiles?
- Are you going to manage your 5M campaigns or are you going to appoint someone in your company to be responsible?
Either way you need to have a plan of action. You need to know what you want to achieve, how long it should take and how you’re going to get there.
You need to know the steps along the way and what tools you should use.
Tools you ask? Yes, tools, things to engage people and get them participating in SM with you.
- Polls
- Contests
- Questions
- Survey
- Images.
- Videos
- Podcasts.
All these are tools you can use to connect and interact with your existing and prospective customers.
Ask them what they want, how they feel. Post images to make them laugh, cry or wonder. Post videos that do the same.
Create videos that educate them about your product or service. Do it in a way that entertains (see Will It Blend on Youtube).
- Create competitions for them to create content for you.
- Help them understand how to get the best out of your product or service.
- Ask how they use your product or service, share it with everyone.
- Offer discounts only available to your followers.
Remember always that there is fierce competition out there and that the consumer has more choice today than at any other time.
Consumers are better educated now too, research is so easy to do, so always bear in mind the question the consumer is asking. “What’s in it for me?”
Will it save them money, improve their life, make them smarter, better looking or raise their status.
What exactly will your product or service or the content you post on Social Media, your blog or anywhere else actually do for them?
This is at the heart of how to use SM for your business. By focusing on how you can help the consumer, you automatically position yourself as the expert they can trust.
You begin to dominate the place the majority of your customers hang out on line, Social Media.
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