Social Media As A Platform For Customer Engagement

In my last social media tip, Plan Your Social Media Marketing, I mentioned the importance of formulating a social media marketing plan before jumping on the bandwagon and haphazardly joining every social media site on the internet. To unleash your business growth potential, try making the most of customer engagement.

The best way to get social with your customers and prospective customers is to find out where they’re hanging out on the internet and then join the conversation. Small businesses, or any business for that matter, do not need to be everywhere, just on the key social media sites where there are questions and lively conversations happening in their particular field. Identify where your target audience is online and then give, give, and give even more.

Are they talking on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn? Or are they on other niche community sites?

The point is to do some research and find out where your target audience is, and then go there. I won’t be going into great detail about all the different social media sites that are available because there are way too many. However, I will briefly mention Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin, as they are three commonly used platforms.

Twitter is a great place to start to get a feel for how the conversations flow regarding any niche. They have a search feature, search.twitter.com, that will help to pinpoint specific keyword(s) and subjects so that you can track and/or look up your keywords and then enter the conversation on that topic.

Facebook can be a little more involved, as they have profile pages, groups, and fan pages, but it is another great place to create a brand identity and interact with your customers. You can ask questions and get great feedback with both of these social media sites.

LinkedIn, another contender in the social media arena, is considered by many as a professional networking site that is more business oriented. With a great exchange of ideas and lively interaction, it can be an insightful way to get the pulse of a niche or market group.

Of course, there are many, many more options, but the focus is to get in on the conversation regarding your small business product or service and then meet the needs of that conversation. Whether it is sought after information, how-to instructions or better pricing and packaging, join the conversation and provide solutions. Using social media as a tool, small businesses can capitalize on the existing interest or help raise the interest in just about any niche with a little research and some consistent dialog.

Peace & Prosperity,