Creativity can be your fun part of the plan. Contests and competition increase customer awareness, engagement and interaction. Customer centric activities are easy enough to co-ordinate. Offer $5 off to your first ten fans, follows, circles or re-tweets. Play I spy, ask customers to find the three buzz words in your posts and the first three commenters who post the three words get $5 off. Pick three buzz words such as quality, best and valuable – just an idea to plant a customer concept. Run a post your photo on my page of your smile in my lobby, entrance, with my product and get $10 off. I could go on an on. You get the idea.
Write down your business motto, mantra or core mission [the good one to share with your customer]. Take a digital photo of the owner opening the entry door or of some other identifiable business photo. Create a few descriptive sentences about the business including what you sell and your city name. Have a quick employee information session notifying the company we will be on social media [today or soon]. Mention your social media policy and expectation if you have one.
Now you are ready, excited? You should be because you did a lot of planning to get here.
Google Plus is your best social network starting point because it’s Google, the search engine!
Google not only includes social sharing in it’s search results, it is easy to use and G+ is best for business, simply because it’s Google.
G+ business profiles originate from a personal profile free with any Gmail account. Activate your personal profile first because you need it to create a business page.
Business page profiles must contain information such as the business website, phone number, business location and a photo at a minimum. The interaction on G+ includes events, photo sharing, video rooms named hangouts, the +1 and sharing buttons. Of course the ability to write extensive posts including links and the ability to comment and share are the best components of the network to build relationships. The way G+ is organized through finding then placing people and businesses in a circle. Obviously place current customers in a circle, all future prospects in another circle. It makes post sharing easy to target because your posts have the ability to be shared with one or more of your circles, with the public or a limited audience including email addresses for non G+ users. You have the control and editing ability for posts.
G+ statistics are emerging, growth is expanding. Will it be here is 10 years? The judge is out. What matters is right now is it’s Google.
Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Linked In, Pinterest and Instagram are not for everybody, and it’s ok if it’s not for you. If they are a fit for your company, great! The same general concepts apply to setting up your business profile there. All are free and may be based off a personal profile.
You’re finally starting to post, share, comment and reply a couple times a week. Don’t dive in to all networks at once. Start with G+. Be consistent, responsive and meet your customer needs.
Your ability to see through the customer as an audience will get you to the target of making sales. Your looking in the mirror, beyond the mirror to see the prize ahead. Reputation develops, stories emerge and conversations about you begin. Your customer thinks about you later in the day. Curiosity generated interest. That’s the mark you strive to hit with your audience.
This post may be criticized by some because I give some strategy away. Because it matters to you and me, business success is important and if a boost can be given using strategy to reach into the social sphere of networks and search engines, we will be satisfied.
As always, your comments are welcome. What do you think?
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