5 Ways for Business Owners to be Successful using Social Media

I was recently on a social media teleseminar and some points were brought up that I didn’t realize people didn’t know about. I thought I would blog about them and hopefully help those out who are new to social media and need some tips to getting started, or help those who don’t quite understand how to use social media.

1. Listen – One of the beauties of social media is it allows to you listen to your customers without any barriers. You get the chance to hear what they are saying about your product, what they are saying about your competition, what they wish they had, etc. By listening to your customer you can answer their questions, help them with a problem, point them to a direction they need to go to solve their issue, and make suggestions. What is all of this called? Customer Service! So stop talking so much, and start listening.
2. Interact – If I told you that you could talk to every customer that came into your store, and give them a smile and a pat on the back, and it wouldn’t take any extra money, would you like that opportunity? Well social media allows you to virtually give a smile and tell them to have a great day. Again, it’s all about customer service. Also, by talking to your customers and helping them solve problems, or just building relationships with them, will immediately reinforce their brand loyalty.
3. Share (promote others, share news items) – Social media was not created for businesses to jump online and talk, talk, talk all about the wonderful things they have to offer, and how fabulous they are. It was created to transform people from content readers into publishers. With that being said, that means the business owner is also a publisher. A PUBLISHER, not a SELF PROMOTING MONSTER. Of course you can talk about promotions, new products, events, etc., but even more than that, you need to be sharing information.
4. Competition – First of all, if your competition is using social media, then you need to be too. Second, again you get to listen to what is being said about your competition and what they are saying. Social media allows you to be competitive and get ahead of businesses in your industry. Are they doing a Twitter Contest? Are people promoting them? Do they have a sale coming up? Then you need to ask yourself, how can we be better? What kind of promotion can we do? Should we do a Twitter contest and if yes, how can we make ours bigger and more exciting? Being able to monitor your competition and what consumers are saying about them is priceless.
5. Be Yourself – The only way to be truly successful with your social media efforts is through authenticity. The beauty of social media is it allows us to break down the boarders to our favorite celebrity, brand, political figure, etc., and have a glimpse inside of their life and their personality. If you hire someone to do all of your social media updating, then you will be unsuccessful. If you have someone manager your account(s), that’s fine, but make sure you are participating in the conversation too.

Tags: businesses on twitter, how to be successful on social media, Social Media, successful social media strategies