Get Connected: Social Media and YOUR Clients

I will be the first to admit that the Twitter craze didn’t capture me when the obsession first came about and it seemed like the waves of news stories revolving around Hollywood Twitter news would never cease.  It was the “socialite” mentality associated with this type of media that kept me from taking any “tweet” talk seriously.  But unlike most fads, Twitter evolved and transformed into something much more than a means for teenage girls to discover what Justin Bieber ate for breakfast.  Instead of a fad, it is a long lasting vehicle for individuals and businesses alike to promote themselves and get connected.  Forms of social media have the potential to be excellent sources of research, lead generation and branding for any company, not to mention an innovative step for SEO in terms of tracking trends and increasing natural inbound links.

Your customers are looking for a company that listens to what they have to say and actually takes an initiative to get to know them and their needs.  If you run a small business, finding a potential client on Facebook and then observing what pages they like and comments they make, allows you to piece together the best strategy for attracting other clients of this nature.  With the incredibly large user base of Facebook, a high distribution of content is possible and, therefore, more future links are also possible.  Once established, knowing what a consumer thinks of you and your competitors gives you an advantage and the ability to be proactive in your marketing tactics from then on.  The trick to then showing customers that you not only heard them, but that you actually listened to what they had to say is posting responses to questions, directing them to appropriate pages on your website, mentioning them in a Tweet, etc. 

Once you’ve taken the dive into social media interaction, getting feedback is the main key to staying at the top of the social food chain and developing well-rounded social networks.  If you have an idea, run it past customers via a blog on your website and get some input from the ones who write the checks before you make a large or risky commitment.  Directly ask a question on Twitter if you want an answer.  Being shy when it comes to social media is not an option (hence the word social).  It’s hard to go wrong with being more involved, friending more relevant people and linking in to more experts in your domain.

But when it comes down to it, forms of social media create a brand, a personality for a company; more than a logo on a business card.  Making that personal connection is increasingly important as competition only gets stiffer and hundreds of companies are digging a foothold in the same target market.  For example, if an SEO enthusiast looks at Slingshot SEO’s website and begins to follow Kelly’s blog (hint hint), that person is able to see the human character that drives the company and is more likely to relate and have further interaction.  Online social marketing expert Joe Griffin states that, “Strong branding leads to natural inbound links.”  From an SEO perspective, it isn’t the social media websites that get your website link popularity, it’s the bloggers and friends that have been attracted to the persona you have created for your company that stir up inbound links. 

Personality incites contact and more contact is the ultimate goal of any form of media.  So digg in and get creative, you might actually end up enjoying your Twitter account, but you didn’t hear that from me.