If you’re a smaller company, finding and reaching your exact target market can be sometimes difficult and then getting to know their thoughts, viewpoints, characteristics and behaviors can also be a struggle if you’re working with a limited marketing budget. Well, in this day and age, you have the gift of social media to help you get to know and better serve your audience.
As part of your bigger marketing picture, social media helps you improve your online presence by increasing brand awareness and showing potential and current customers what products or services your company offers. Social media also helps you, as a company, to be seen as an “expert” in your industry. By sharing, posting, tweeting, pinning and +1-ing, you’re engaging with your customers and offering them advice, striking up conversations, asking questions, solving problems and so much more. They get to know your business on a personal level and as a customer yourself, it would be interesting to learn about a company’s history, employees, services and experience before you would buy anything they’re offering.
As influential as social media is, many businesses don’t give it its fair share of the marketing strategy. If you’re considering creating a new social media plan for your business, here are a few tips to help you along and to give your campaign the momentum it may need.
Industry Events
Check out Industry events near you, as this is a great way to meet potential customers face-to-face, engage with fellow businesses, etc. Trade shows are especially great for demonstrating your product or service and spreading brand awareness. Invite everyone you meet at these events to find your business socially. “Like us on Facebook to stay in contact with us.”
Influence Blogs, Forums, Twitter
Share you knowledge as an industry expert by curating content for your own and industry-related blogs. Do some research on industry trends or respond to customers’ questions you may find in forums by writing a blog post to further elaborate on a topic. Then use social media to heavy promote your blog posts. You can also ask fellow industry experts to share the knowledge with their social followers if you’re providing something truly of value.
Public Relations
Some good old PR will help you improve your business on social media. Think “offline” for a moment and contact local newspapers, reporters, editors or print media, radio stations, etc. and offer them newsworthy tidbits of information they can run with. For example, if you’re supporting a charity to raise money for a good cause, let them know and tell them to encourage people to help with the fundraising event on social media. A client of ours recently helped a charity by donating $1 for every Facebook “Like” they received. Get creative with your campaigns and get the “offline” folks to engage “online.”
The most basic form of PR and still one of the most effective is issuing a Press Release. There are numerous PR news sites to submit press releases to and once you’ve done so, your news will spread across many news sites across the nation. Within your press release, encourage readers to visit or follow you on social media.
RSS Feed & Newsletters
Allow your loyal customers to stay up to date with what’s going on at your company by having them subscribe to an RSS feed. In addition to your RSS, send out a monthly newsletter to your current customers to improve your company’s retention rate. Within your e-blast or newsletter, encourage readers to continue reading more about the topics within the letter on your social media pages. As a result, you know your newsletter is going straight to their inbox and you’re giving them the opportunity to easily access all of your social pages if they haven’t done so already.
Customer Testimonials
What’s the one thing everyone likes to do…talk about themselves and their experiences! Give your customers the chance to spread the word about your company by giving them the spotlight. Social media is great for this as it’s easy for the to create videos, write a review, take a survey, etc. Also, should you happen to get a negative review, you then have the opportunity to address it and resolve any issues. Customers appreciate it when a company responds to a problem a fellow customer had or an underlying issue with the product or service. It allows them to get to know your business on a personal level. And of course, the more positive testimonials your business has, the more people you draw in. At the end of the day, people like to read or hear about other peoples’ experiences, especially if it is that of a friend or relative. Therefore, let your customers do the work for you!
Well, there you have it! 5 tips you can start using to boost your social media campaign. If you’d like to learn more, read the latest article on how to achieve a Savvy Social Media Campaign on SEO News or hire the best social media marketing firm near you!