Social Media is the landscape upon which an interactive dialogue takes place over the Internet (and now the air waves of your favorite smart phone). Friends and family use it to keep in touch, businesses use it to communicate, and consumers use it as a way to learn and influence the businesses who want their attention. The popularity and growth of Social Media over the last 5 years is tremendous, and only continues to grow. So how do you take your business to the next level – and utilize Social Media to benefit your clients, and yourself?

#1: Content, Content, Content : Have something to say, and don’t make it boring.

Resonate with what your audience or potential clients want to engage about. If you are in the business of producing custom pencils with monograms, then you may want to discuss and write about subjects that tie back in some way. For instance discussing gifts for the holidays or how customized pencils branded can be used as souvenirs or keep sakes at the front desk of your business to give away to clients.   The idea is to have something of interest to say – not just be promoting yourself.  When you send out a tweet, or post something on your facebook page – its ok to lead them back to you for a potential sale, but you want your content and message to be helpful, and insightful and not just self promotional.

#2: Build your Soap Box – and speak loudly!

You can pick your soap box, maybe it’s twitter, your own blog, or facebook – or focusing on review sites – but you need to speak up and loudly.  This means you can’t just setup an account, and post something once a year.  Your followers will not stick around, and others wont stumble onto your message.   By broadcasting your content out to the internet (via twitter, facebook, your blog, etc) – people will find the content that means something to them.  Again if you were selling pencils, and talked about how its a good gift to present business clients.  Someone searching for gifts might stumble upon your message, and learn about your business – and in the end could lead to a sale.   What is even more important, is when someone finds your content and follows you – their friends who follow them, now get lead to you.  Meaning by attracting just 1 person to follow you on facebook, or twitter – its possible 100’s more may take notice, and that multiples further and further long term as more people take a look and find what you have to say valuable or interesting.

#3: Expand your Soap Box – automatically!

If you want to maximize your reach I’d suggest you utilize a wordpress blog and leverage its ability to use ‘plugin modules’ to auto post your blog content right to your facebook and twitter audience.  This way you are broadcasting in all channels at once!   I recommend the “Auto Tweet Plugin” and  “Wordbooker” plugins for wordpress to achieve this.  If you aren’t sure, or don’t have a blog- contact your web hosting company for assistance.  Most offer automated and built-in word-press blog for your web site and can assist you with this.

#4: Go where your clients go!

If you are in the restaurant business, you want to frequent discussion groups, forums, round-tables and review sites in your industry.  Yelp is the most popular for reviews on restaurants, but there are more open discussions elsewhere too.  Respond and interact in these forums yourself, soon you will be consider a member, or even an expert on the subject.  People will actually look to you for advice, and likely follow you on Twitter and Facebook if they find what you have to say interesting (further expanding your reach in the Social Media world).

 

Tune in next time, for more tips to Chop the Competition!

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