No longer are Facebook and twitter just for old school friends who want to catch up, savvy business owners have found that these platforms have the potential to reach thousands of new customers every day. Better still, it’s relatively free, yet, there’s more to social networking than just setting up a page and hoping for the best.

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your business public profiles:

Keep Your Pages Updated:

Not with personal information though, your customers don’t need to know about your family gatherings or your weekend away. They do, however, want to know about any special offers you may have on, new products, reviews of your services, and links to your website.

Fill with Information:

Just like you would your website, Facebook is a great tool for uploading your blogs, newsletters or articles. These don’t have to be recent, once a customer shows an interest in your services, they will be keen to learn more about the company’s history, so bring all your copy out of the archive.

Keep Your Profile Business-like:

If you have a fan page on Facebook, your profile page should hold all the information that your website does. Its great if your social networking site encourages customers to your website, but greater still is if they have all the information they need to hand right away. Make sure you have an address, telephone number, and website URL on your profile.

Secure a Good Facebook/Twitter URL:

By securing a Facebook URL early, you will optimize the amount of customers you will reach. People don’t want to have to remember facebook.com/your14579235business, instead if possible, try to keep it to your business name. With an original business name you should be in with a chance of this URL being available.

Keep Tweets Short and Sweet

There is a character limit on tweets, so be wary of linking your Facebook page to your twitter account. Posts on Facebook will show up as links on your twitter account, giving just a list of garbled numbers for a customer to click on. Instead use variety. Use twitter to advertise special promotions, short and sweet such as, “Sale on Now – Here!” Or amusing rich content then use Facebook to be a little more in depth when you have the space to do so. Most twitter account owners hold a Facebook account too.

Encourage Customer Interaction

In the world of internet marketing, the personal touch is lost. Customers and clients understand this; however you can stand out from the crowd by bringing that personal touch back. Everyone is craving the good old days when buying a cucumber we’d chat about the weather or the latest instalment of Coronation Street, however, now that we’re all too busy to chat, we do like to have a little personal service. Businesses that stand out seem to care about their clients. Although you won’t have personal information in your social media platforms, your clients will, and by returning the follow on twitter, occasionally re-tweeting their tweets or liking their status on Facebook, you can make sure that when the computer is turned off, they are still talking about your excellent service and customer care.

Follow, Join, Belong!

It may seem like a waste of time to follow celebrities on twitter, or join groups on Facebook, however, these are untapped resources just waiting for your advertising. For example, if your business is shoe sales, and you join the Facebook group, “I love shoes”, when you have a special offer to announce, you can share it on the groups wall potentially reaching thousands, sometimes millions of members. Make groups relevant to your business not your personal life. Also following celebrities on twitter, you can reply with a witty comment to their tweets, which will reach all of their followers and you only need one per cent to be curious and click on your profile!

Katheria the owner of a new cleaning company aksed the following “please advise me on the best was to go about generating new leads”

Hi Katheria,

1. Your website is a free low grade website and this will reflect on the service that you provide. You need to present a professional image if you want to service commercial clients. Consider investing in a professional website.
2. Get yourself listed in Google Local to achieve a quick page 1 listing for Cleaning Services Swindon (see sc.betterbusinessresults.com for a free guide to help you do this quickly)
3. You should also consider using a better domain name like swindoncleaningservices.co.uk or officecleaningswindon.co.uk
4. Look at some of your competition to see how they present themselves eg http://www.swindoncleaning.biz/ This is what you are competing against in the eyes of your customer.
5. Is there a niche within the cleaning business that you can specialise in and become known as the local expert for that type of cleaning. This would then differentiate you and make it easier for you to target your potential customers. eg Do you specialise in cleaning Nursing Homes or Commercial Units – Just two extremes to get you thinking.
6. Do you make any offers for first time customers? In order to land a new client you may have to offer a first clean free or at least 100% money back guarantee if not completely satisfied. Or offer 3 cleans for the price of 2 if paid in advance.
7. Do you have a top 100 list of businesses you would like to target in your area. (this information can be purchased from a good marketing company like ours) You may want to set up a multi-part mail out campaign where you send a sequence of multiple direct response mail shots to your target list.
8. Are you using social media, ie Do you have a Facebook Business Page and Twitter account. You would probably also want a good linked-in profile for your line of work.
9. You could consider running Google Adwords (PPC) ads for a select number of geolocal keyword phrases to catch the people that are actively looking for your services right now. Also consider Facebook Ads as well.
10. Do you have a good list of testimonials from past clients or could you get them.
11. Are there complimentary service providers to yours that you may be able to do a joint venture with? ie Use the relationship they already have with the customer that you want to get to. Pay a formal commission for all introductions that lead to new business.

Sorry there is no quick fix or magic bullet. But marketing is a large subject and you should really look to get someone to either mentor you or do it for you so you can concentrate on building the business.

Best regards,
Steve.

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