Why Should I Socialize?
Improves communication within your industry, community, and with clients
- Makes it easier to connect in real time with existing or potential clients
- Lets you communicate with clients in their preferred channel, which is increasingly moving away from email
- Allows for bi-directional communication which is becoming expected
Builds community engagement
- Provides another way for existing and potential customers to connect with you
- Makes it easy to share the latest tips and news from your industry
- Allows you to show your value to potential clients before they hire you
Helps drive SEO/increases marketing website traffic
- Helps displace ratings sites and other listings you may not have control over in first page rankings
- Integrating social media assets into your marketing website can improve its SEO
- Links from social media sites provide traffic and SEO lift
- Social sites give you an appropriate venue to exchange web links with outreach partners
Helps generate leads and close prospects
- Used correctly, you can generate some leads
- Provides another way to “sell” your company and help prospects close
Ancillary revenue potential
- Your company can sell banner ads or web links to cooperating local merchants, highlighting them as a “preferred” provider of their services
Best Practices
Encouraging clients to connect on Facebook. Posts we have seen on other sites:
- Testimonials & reviews
- Industry related news & tips
- Promotion of charitable causes your company participates in
- Special event notices
Using social media to generate leads
- Infrequent promotion of really good specials and incentives
- Reminder about referral programs and incentives
SEO
- Make sure you optimize social media sites for SEO (e.g. set appropriate YouTube tags)
- Link from social sites into community pages
- Integrate blog headlines into community pages
- Link your website to your blog and social media pages
- Include links to your blog and social media pages in your email signature
Encourage consumer interaction
- Post photos from projects & events
- Ask open ended questions in Facebook (e.g. What is your favorite pizzeria?)
- When considering what charity to donate to, give choices & allow consumers to vote on Facebook & Twitter for the charity of their favorite
- Poll consumers for their opinion about potential changes you might make, their opinion on industry-related topics (especially common misconceptions), what effects their decision in who they use for your product or service
- Have photo contests
Improve communication/customer service
- Alert consumers about routine maintenance for your product/service
- Notify consumers of days that you will be closed due to inclement weather, maintenance, or holidays
- Encourage feedback and reviews
