Social media is a powerful means for reaching your customers and clients. It can be a challenge, though, to translate this capability into a voice and communications plan that suits your business. If you have a proven method for connecting with your clientele, you want to adopt a savvy social media presence that ups your game and expands your audience, while maintaining the familiar identity that your core supporters recognize.
Having an adept and strategic social media presence enables you to share your savvy as an industry expert via the social media platforms where you clients and customers search for information. It gives you the chance to grow your voice and share your insiders’ scoop about your subject matter. This stands to expand your audience, because this is the type of content users are inclined to pursue, discuss and share.
Here’s how to get started:
How audiences use social media
Audiences consult social media for entertainment, news and research. They want updates, answers to their questions and instructions about where and how to get their needs met. If you offer content which provides these essentials, it can expand your reach.
You may worry that you don’t have many followers, but you get them by working within the medium itself. The more you post and interact on various social media platforms, the more you stand to grow your following.
Flex your expertise
You know your business. You know what customers who call, email or stop by generally ask about and what they want. Use this awareness of your customers’ needs to drive your social media efforts.
Let’s say you own a furniture re-upholstery business. What kind of phone calls do you get? What kinds of general questions do customers pose? These can become your blog posts, updates or newsletter articles that you circulate to followers.
This way, prospective customers searching for answers can learn about what to expect when they want to reupholster a chair, directly from you, the pro. You’re answering the frequently asked questions that they are inclined to pose. Doing so provides your audience with shareable content, which grows your audience potential.
Connect with partners
You’re not just an expert, you’re an enthusiast. Note where your fellow enthusiasts linger, and show them that you inhabit those same spaces. In the case of furniture restoration, connect with antique organizations, historical societies, flea markets, museums and other restoration artisans in your area. Then post pictures when you visit these establishments.
Tap into the interest you share with your audience, and show them that you love it as much as they do. Doing this also helps you grow your audience, because your fellow enthusiasts see you as another one of the gang, which you are!
Tell your story
Use social media platforms to shape the compelling story of who you are and what you do. You want to reach those who share your interest by promoting your craft and telling your story.
Social media offers rich platforms to do that: share the news that reupholstering furniture is more than a great way to re-purpose well-crafted pieces. It’s also environmentally sound. Plus, it leads to some incredible finds like that piece of furniture that was purchased at a garage sale and brought into your shop where you discovered that it was a rare treasure that you restored it to its original beauty.
Your work, your passion, enables you to generate unique stories. The more dimensions of that you share on social media, the greater your potential for audience involvement and interaction.
Interested in building an audience on social media but don’t know where to get started? Give Social Butterfly a call and let us do the work for you!