Social media is a great method of outreach if you know how to use it.  Many businesses utilize social media because it is a cheap and easy way to connect with consumers. However, some companies do not know what they should and should not include on their social media pages. As a result they decide to never start on social media, or start but stay away as much as possible. Put these five tips in your social media tool kit before you aim to get thousands of likes and followers.

1. Set Goals

This sounds simple, but it helps you understand what expectations should be. A lot of your success with social media would depend on the audience you are trying to target. For instance, you should know what the most popular social media website for this specific audience is, how many times would they visit this website, and what type of messages work best for that audience.  A social media assessment can help you with that.

You could arbitrarily set a goal. For example to increase “Likes” on Facebook by 20 percent by the end of this month.  Or, you could analyze competing business’ social media efforts and set a more feasible goal. Once you have set your goal, check out Facebook Analytics. This will help you understand what times are best to send out messages to the users, what messages received the most coverage, as well as other useful information.

2. Increase Credibility

Credibility is particularly important in social media. In order to present your business in a viable manner make sure everything on your page is business related. All posts should connect with your professional efforts. However, this does not mean you cannot have fun and be creative. Some ways RMS has done this is by:

Posting fun photos of employees:

Participating in trends:

Posting about events happening in the area:

 Efforts like these help add a “face” to your business and often generate the most hits.

3. Pull Responses

The prep work for this is easy to complete, but actually getting responses is difficult to achieve.  All you have to do to get started is to give users an opportunity to start a conversation. For example you could do something like this:

4. Follow Up

Once you open the lines of communication respond quickly with accurate information. Furthermore, consider sending direct messages to users who like your page, like posts, or follow you by sending them a simple thank you note. This is also a great opportunity to include a quick plug about your business, and to provide them with resources to seek out additional information. Even if issues come up on social media, it provides you an opportunity to address it immediately. Even more importantly, others can see you were reasonable, responsible, and professional. Below is a review on Facebook from a ViewPoint Panel member, which RMS quickly responded to.

 5. Reward Customers

You may be wondering why many people have not liked your page or posts thus far. One way to increase your numbers is to create an incentive to come to your page. Many businesses offer exclusive coupon codes that give customers a reason to visit its page. For example, you could offer a code for 10% off an order.

Another way to reward customers is to create your own contest or challenge by having customers complete a task in order to get a reward. This could be as simple as asking customers to post a photo of themselves using your product or service to your page. Then, the customer with the best photo wins $50. This is an easy way to get awesome promotional efforts out to current and potential consumers. Below is an example from a post on RMS’s Refer-A-Friend Challenge.

Research & Marketing Strategies (RMS) is a market research firm located in Syracuse, NY. If you are interested in learning more social media tips contact our Director of Business Development Sandy Baker at SandyB@RMSresults.com or by calling 1-866-567-5422.