Attracting local customers through social media

In recent years, social media has entered the zeitgeist of marketing. It has become imperative to have an online presence as a means of exposing customers to valuable information about businesses. Social media can be a way to inform, comment, advertise and promote. The best part? It’s free to start. A social media presence can fit into any marketing budget, and with steady monitoring, can become a personality-rich extension of your business online.

As stated early, both Facebook and Twitter are free to start. You can get an account up and running in seconds. That’s the easy part. From there you will need to develop a social media strategy. Who do you follow? What are you posting? What are you saying? Connecting with a company that offers marketing consulting will help you optimize the best plan for your business, and will open up the opportunity to engage in paid search programs to increase your reach at a cost. Both Facebook and Twitter offer paid search packages as well as the tools to analyze and optimize your strategy.

As an added bonus Twitter made a deal with Google to allow tweets to show up in Google search results. This news is huge for social media strategies, as they now double as SEO strategies. So when you expand your social media presence, you expand how well your business indexes in online search. It’s a win-win.

With a strong social media presence comes the responsibility of monitoring feedback. It is important to respond to positive comments and even more important to resolve negative comments. Both positive feedback and positive complaint resolutions can go a long way online, often times becoming the subject of subsequent content. Allowing your customers to create content is part of interacting with them, and embracing their content will help your reputation and reach grow.

Another advantage of social media is grooming accounts to be industry news aggregators. Think of your Facebook feed. We know what every member of the family and our high school class is up to. However, if we build a social media profile around a solid strategy of following industry-savvy accounts, our pages will begin to aggregate valuable news for viewers. And don’t forget, this can also be a way to monitor competitors in your industry.

Clearly, there are more advantages than disadvantages to a strong social media presence. Social media offers exposure, personality and a near-direct line to customers. While customer feedback can be negative, a good social media strategy can turn it into positive content. With the help a consulting team, a social media strategy for your small business will give you the extra reach you need to connect to customers, all while keeping you updated on industry happenings.

Read our latest hyperlocal marketing posts:
Hyperlocal Marketing Series #1: How to Connect With Your Best Customers
Hyperlocal Marketing Series #2: Local Directories
Hyperlocal Marketing Series #3: A Responsive Website
Hyperlocal Marketing Series #5: Loyalty Programs

Article written by Merrell Sheehan, posted by SB