My Grandfather would always say “Hey, you need to pick your direction THEN move.” This was great advice when I was a kid, and is even better advice now that I am working with social media.  Simply creating a facebook or Twitter account doesn’t mean you are really participating in social media. Customers need to be able to find you easily on Social Media sites and then choose to hear what you have to say.  You also need to consistently and predictably communicate with them so they stay interested.  Here are a few practical tips to help you pick the right direction and get you moving towards building and keeping a solid following.

1. Set Goals - Social Media can seem vague, hard to measure, and a bit out of your control, but most business owners set goals for sales, revenue and profitability, so it makes sense to also set goals for social media so you know when you are being successful.  Start out with something easy to measure like a number of posts per week. Try 3 posts per week and stick to it for a month to see how things go.  Change the frequency and topics based on positive reaction from your followers. 

Sometimes when you are just starting out with something, it may not come naturally to you, a little friendly prodding can be a good thing to keep you on target and help you meet your goals.  With the FYItag Social Media Planner, you can set goals for each Social Media Network and the software will show you how you are doing. FYItag will even let you know if you are communicating a little too much so you can spread the information out more evenly.  Creating and sticking to realistic goals will help you build a credible, reliable and steady stream of information that your customers can rely on.

2.  Constantly Promote Your Social Media Presence – Any person following your business using social media has the potential to give you exposure to hundreds of other people who may not yet know about you.  Simply put, the exposure your business can get goes up exponentially when your followers pass on your information. The best part about it?  It’s free!  So let everyone know that you have a social media presence. The more followers you have, the more of their followers you might be able to reach. Do whatever you can to help your customers find you. On your website, business cards, print ads, emails, and signage and in every conversation you have, you should let people know how to find you on social media sites.  Remember, that people opt in to hear what you have to say, which makes them great leads!  A recent study shows that for people who follow major brands like Coke, McDonalds, Starbucks and others, were almost 30% more likely on average to continue using the brand and over 40% were more likely to recommend you, and spend almost double what other customers do with you.

These days the first place people go to find out more about you is the internet. So another great way to get followers is to create links to your business in multiple places online.  The more places your business shows up online, the more likely people are to find and follow you.  That’s why we created FYItag.com.  When you fill out a business profile on FYItag.com you get a directory listing focused on social media connections. Customers can find you and find out how to connect with you easily. It is a great place to send people to as well; you can put a link to your FYItag profile on your website or display it in your office. You also get a place to blog for free at FYItag.com.  If you don’t yet have a website FYItag.com combined with social media might be all you need!  Your FYItag.com profile provides a single place where customers can find you and connect to you on social media sites and the free directory listing and blog increase your chance of showing up higher in the results for search engines like Google. 

FYItag is dedicated to making your business a success with innovative toolsets and free resources for communicating over Social Media Sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.  Visit us at FYItag.com to find out more.

Johnathon Howard

CMO

Please check out the other blogs in this series:

Part 1 in the blog series: Starting out

Part 3 in the blog series: What to say

Part 4 in the blog series: Ideas and the power of pictures

Part 5 in the blog series: Social Media – Your new Toy