What does social media do for you business? Does it bring in customers or get your information out to the public? If you analyzed your businesses’ Facebook or Twitter page right now, would you see any signs of life or just useless posts that seem to go no where other than into the long history of wasteful content?

The objective of social media is to drive potential customers to your website to purchase a product or service and without exposure to your social media, business won’t come and you won’t profit.

Strategy First, Attack Later

It’s all about strategy. How can you build your social media to line up with your marketing plan? It starts with building a strategy that can bring qualified traffic, add likes and shares and create customers.

Tactics To Use

Strategy is pointless without tactics involved to carry out your social media plan. Let’s imagine your business is a locally owned lawn care service focusing on residential properties as well as commercial. Here are a few tactics to help build your clientele and make you money:

Follow and Like: Every single Facebook and Twitter page allows you to follow other accounts in order to connect with other likeminded businesses or individuals. If you’re in the lawn care business, following companies like Lowe’s or a local nursery that sells plants and trees may allow for more exposure to their clientele.

Following businesses that hold your same duties will give you an opportunity to keep up with competition and exceed it with more engaging posts. The chances of a ‘follow back’ or ‘like’ from companies or individuals is partly based on the type of connections you have with like-minded practices.

Tweet, Retweet and Repeat: Don’t shy away from posting any content on your businesses Facebook or Twitter page. It really helps with exposure and tagging businesses or individuals can allow for more followers. Using hashtags will up your visibility on trending topics for both Facebook and Twitter, giving more potential customers a chance to see what your business is all about.

Don’t ignore Interactions: The quickest way to sabotage your social media growth is by ignoring those who comment, like or share your Facebook or Twitter posts. By creating a relationship with your customers or followers, you’ll build trust and ultimately gain loyal customers from your interactions.

Create a Timeline

In order to achieve a successful social media presence, your company must create concrete goals daily, weekly and monthly in order to continue to build your reach and your customer base.
These goals include:

• How many accounts (profiles) your business should follow
• How many followers to add to your businesses follow list (by week)
• How many tweets per day, week and month
• How many retweets you should perform
• How many retweets you’ll want to receive
• How many leads your business should get through social media
• How many web visits your website gets from tweets, posts, etc.

Let Your Social Media Grow

It’s not truly a success until you begin gaining followers or likes on your Twitter and Facebook page. Although likes and follows don’t equate to profit, they’ll most certainly gain you valuable visibility that could potentially bring clients to your business.

By: Patrick Price