Although you may have a presence on a social media site such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, is your business really considered ‘social’? A lot of businesses fail at social media. If you’re not using it as a way to communicate with your customers and fail to create two-way communication then there isn’t really much point. If you’re just using social media as an advertising platform and not a way of building relationships with your customers, then you’re doing it wrong. The decision to implement social media into a brand is usually made with the intention of reaching as many customers as possible, however many businesses fail to realize the value of social media as a tool to engage with their existing audience. We’ve put together a list of tips on how to make social media really work for your business.
Determine Your Customers’ Worth
Before you begin, it’s important to work out how much profit each customer is bringing into your business. To do this, you will need to figure out the total lifetime profit of your average customer by asking how much they spend, and how much of that is profit. Then, you should determine how much a prospective customer is worth, and how much you would spend in order to convert them to a customer. Let’s say that the average customer is worth $500, and you’d spend $20 per prospect on advertising and marketing – it’s definitely worth it.
Choose Your Platform Carefully
The social media platforms that you choose to use should be chosen carefully with your target audience in mind. For example, if you’re targeting Sioux Falls marketing professionals, you probably won’t get very far on Instagram, whereas LinkedIn and Twitter may be excellent choices of platform for your audience. Facebook is a great platform for most businesses whether small and large, and also tends to be the go-to social media platform for most audiences. Twitter is also very useful, and can be used as a great real-time microblogging tool for a vast number of different companies in different industries. However, only you know which social media platform will be the best choice to reach your target audience.
Use Incentives to Attract Customers
As a business you’ll always be looking to increase your popularity on social media, with the amount of ‘Likes’ that you receive on Facebook and followers on Twitter for example being just some of the crucial numbers that will determine how popular a business is on social media. The use of incentives in order to entice customers to like your page or follow your social media account is a great strategy to improve your presence and reach more people on social media. For example, entering anybody who ‘likes’ your Facebook page into a free prize draw is likely to get your social media account some attention.
Are you using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to reach your customers? What strategies and platforms have helped you to engage with them? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.