By Sam Zastrow, Published April 21, 2012
Social media is a fantastic way to deliver web content and to keep in touch with customers, but it can also serve as a valuable tool for finding new customers. Depending on your business or industry, there are many ways to find and reach out to potential customers via social media channels. Here are a few basic guidelines for finding customers using social media:
Use Twitter’s search and advanced search functions to find folks that are talking about your business. Even if searching your company’s name doesn’t reveal much, you can search for keywords that describe your goods or services. For example, if you own a bakery in Milwaukee, you could search for tweets containing “cookies Milwaukee” or “donuts Milwaukee.”
Make frequent use of image-based posts. Facebook statistics indicate that image-based posts drive twice as much engagement as text-based posts. When your followers share or like your images, it shows up on their friends’ timelines. This exposure can grow your social media audience and widen your potential customer base.
Use contests to boost engagement. People love free stuff. What better way to get folks talking about your company than to run a social media contest for free products and discounts? Not only will people be engaging with your company, they’ll also want to learn more about the cool products they can win, which can help generate sales.
Post different content to different social mediums. Obviously, you should be posting your website content on all of your social media pages, but it’s important to post unique content to each channel. Many companies now use a social media tool like Nimble to post to all of their pages at once, but customers won’t care to follow multiple accounts if they’re being fed the same content over and over again.
Personally engage followers. One of the biggest challenges for companies regarding social media is engaging effectively with customers. You need to humanize your brand on social media channels and personally engage followers in order to bridge this gap.
How are you using social media to find customers?
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