Social Media is a fantastic way to connect and engage with your customers and potential customers. Twitter, Facebook, Google Places and other social networking venues work to engage local customers, drive your popularity and increase your sales.
10 ways offline businesses can use social media.
1.Maintain Positive Online Reputation: Don’t just prepare social media profiles and sit on it: reply to comments, post interesting content, pursue friends and update your status regularly.
2. Social tools: Create tools that is related to your product. Use YouTube videos to promote your tools and have people compete using their skills at your place of business.
3. Promote your social presence: Ask people to follow your business on Twitter or to “like” it on Facebook. Put it on your receipts, invoices, and signs to get your current customer base on board to build momentum.
4. Put your whole company to work: If your business employs people besides you, give them all time during the day to post social networking updates. This gets your whole team involved in the marketing effort while increasing the exposure of your business in the social world.
5. Find out what your competitors are doing: The amount of involvement your company has in social media may vary depending on the nature of your business. Don’t ever fall behind what others in your sector are doing, so keep tabs on them and then compete for online prominence.
6. Follow the lifecycle: Don’t let your Facebook campaign get in a rut: social marketing has a lifecycle that you should follow. Listen to what customers are saying about your market and products, engage those customers with appealing content and promotions, and then analyze your results. Focus on your most successful efforts. Identify the promotions and content that are most successful and build on them. When you can prove that an initiative isn’t working, stop it and try something else.
7. Build a sense of community: Both online and offline you can work to make your customers feel like a special family or a close network of friends. Do this by hosting community events at your physical store and online. Help promote your city or community together with your business to help people feel like they belong at your store.
8. Don’t spread yourself too thin: If you have limited resources, you may have trouble maintaining an exciting presence on every single social media platform. Choose the number and types of sites you can manage well rather than risk leaving stale or poor quality content everywhere.
9. Manage your reputation: Do you know what customers or potential customers are saying about your business, your products, your brand, and your employees online? Pay attention to the comments you receive on Facebook, keep a Twitter search running for key names, products, and service that relate to your business. Set up Google Alerts, and handle problems and complaints head on. What a great opportunity to show the world your willingness to engage people to resolve their problems and address their concerns!
10. Be patient: As social media starts to mature, instant success will become rarer. Don’t let that bother you. Keep up a fresh, dynamic, and engaging social presence and you will reap rewards.
These 10 ways offline businesses can use social media will help brick and mortar businesses build a strong social and physical presence in both their online and offline communities. Start working on yours today.
