Almost three-quarters of small-business owners are confident
in their social media strategies. Still need help with yours? Try following
these 7 tips.
Promotion and engagement are really two sides of
the same coin. Engagement is rooted in consistently sharing insight and
providing value every time you connect with a customer. This establishes
credibility while building trust and inspiring customers to tell their friends
about you. Promotion extends your engagement efforts by presenting a valuable
offer that’s based on your customers’ interests and needs. Social media
amplifies your efforts so you can be found and engage a wider audience to
grow your business.
To put it all together, here are seven best
practices for successfully engaging customers and promoting your small business
through social media.
1. Follow the
one-in-seven rule.
This rule is where only one of every seven
posts overtly promotes your business. The remaining six should be focused on
sharing valuable content, including posts from the community. This doesn’t mean
you can’t promote your business in those other posts; just be sure you pair it
with great content.
2. Ask
conversation-starter questions.
Most people enjoy sharing their opinions, so
ask Facebook fans to weigh in on topics that are relevant to your business and
interesting to them. For example, a fitness center may ask fans to vote on
their favorite summer sports in order to be entered into a drawing to win
private lessons for them and a friend who joins the club. The questions should
engage fans and inspire them to refer business while giving the business owner
great insight.
3. Share your
expertise.
Post little-known, fun facts in the form of
questions with a special offer presented to the first person to answer
correctly.
4. Provide value.
While including fun posts that reflect your
personality is a must, it’s important to create content that benefits your
followers. That can mean posting tips on best practices, providing access to
white papers, or offering special deals on products or services.
5. Enhance the rewards
for virtual check-ins.
For a specific period of time, double the
points each time a customer checks in on Foursquare and triple the points each
time he or she brings a friend. Their friends on social networks will see when
they’ve checked in while you expand your reach exponentially.
6. Create a Pinterest board.
Make sure the board has eye-catching visuals
and run a contest through it that will inspire and reward customers for their
participation. Be sure to encourage them to re-pin and create their own boards
that reflect the initial contest for additional social amplification of your
campaign.
7. Avoid syndicated
messages.
While you can use tools that allow you to
write one message and have it appear on a variety of social media outlets, you
risk losing the sincerity behind the message. You can use similar language as
you promote your offer on different sites; just be sure to change up the words
while reflecting the tone of each network.
If you find that your customers are scattered
across a variety of networks, focus your efforts where they’re most active. Not
sure? Ask. Otherwise, you may waste a lot of time skimming the surface of
multiple networks with little results.
When small-business owners apply these best
practices to social media engagement and promotion, we’ll likely see that
already impressive 72 percent success statistic continue to rise.
Credit: Open Forum
