Using Twitter & Facebook For Business
I know that social media is all the rage these days. You’ll hear every marketer and guru tell you that you “must be on Twitter and Facebook.”
They tell you to get out there and be friends with others but they never tell you how or why. Without that important piece of the puzzle you wonder what the value of it is, and how it works.
Let me quickly tell you. Selling products is more than filling a need for a customer. It’s an exchange. Sometimes, it’s simply an exchange of an item or cash – but often, in the buyers mind, it’s an exchange of cash for a lifestyle improvement. That’s a pretty big thing to your customer and they want to know they can trust you to give them what they seek.
That’s where social media comes into play. Using blogging, facebook or twitter to show people who you are, what you know, and how you can help them builds trust in an otherwise faceless medium; the Internet.
The main focus of “being social” is to use these applications to build relationships with your customer. However, I think many of us are Twittering – or using Facebook or MySpace and not seeing the results we are looking for – because we are targeting or ‘friending’ the wrong group of people. In other words we are not targeting our segment of buyers.
Start thinking of who you have on your friends list – are they your family and friends – or your customers? Here’s the difference if you have friends and family, are they your purchasing customers? For example: It’s great to have all your family following you on Twitter, it makes you look very popular indeed. But those thousands of followers aren’t necessarily your buyers.
If you enjoy the ‘social’ part of social media, perhaps you should have one account to talk with friends and another account to build your list of potential customers.
You’ll get a lot more return on investment by following the one simple rule below.
SOCIAL MARKETING GOLDEN RULE: Spend your time on socializing with YOUR CUSTOMERS.
If you have time and energy left at the end of the day, spend the rest socializing with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
Here are five more tips to maximize your social marketing:
1. Focus your Tweets and Facebook posts on your business. Make the blurbs benefit your customer; “just in rare first edition Harry Potter” or “check out this blog post about Starbucks Collectibles” These types of tweets are much more interesting to your buyers than which conference you attended or what you had for lunch.
2. Toss in an invitation to join your blog RSS feed, Twitter Account, Facebook or MySpace account in every email or package you ship to your customer and tell them what’s in it for them if they join. Super bonus – make it a handwritten invitation signed by you!
3. Don’t waste your valuable time on sites that don’t return the investment. Check out the social media sites demographics before spending time building a following. Facebook is more likely to be your place if you sell products to women over 40 – Twitter if you are selling to Internet geeks and marketers – MySpace to the youngish rockers, etc.
4. Post regularly – people love stability – but don’t take up all the oxygen in the room! Twitter & Facebook can seem like a really loud party with everyone shouting to be heard. Tip: People who post too much, get removed from feeds.
5. Ask questions! Your clients and customers want to know you are listening to them more than anything else in the world! Set up surveys, invite them to reply to your tweets and posts and be open to comments.