Making social media work for you is a key parameter to getting people to your site. Being accessible to your potential clients is necessary in order to find out what they want and deliver on those promises. So, if social media isn’t already a core component of your marketing strategy, make it one. Joining Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like will put you in touch with your audience on a granular level. Here are some quick tips for nurturing that relationship:

• Create and manage profiles on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube.
• Share information via posts, tweets, and video postings. Collaborate with your peers and make valuable connections.
• Encourage feedback from your followers through questions, polls, and comments.
• Make sure your business profile is always up to date. Don’t forget to post at least three times a week in order to maintain a presence, suggests Social Media Today.
• Ask your customers what they want.
• Offer incentives to follow you or check you out; coupons, promotions, deals, specials…these all get customers actively engaged.

Project Your Voice

Social media marketing is a no-brainer in terms of cost. It costs nothing to manage your social media contacts. All you need to invest is your time. Small businesses can do this on their own; large businesses can hire a social media marketing professional to handle all interactions, posts and shares. Project your voice so your audience can relate to your business and form opinions of how it’s relevant to them now. Honesty really is the best policy. Post from the heart, be genuine and most of all, be helpful. Some tips to achieve that:

• Open the flow of information
• Nurture relationships upon first contact
• Actively listen to your audience and respond in kind
• Speak to your followers as friends
• Respond quickly to postings to show you are on top of things
• Encourage users to share their experiences, snap photos, tag others and get involved
• Avoid using corporate jargon; save that for your website.

Incorporating a killer social media marketing strategy into your overall plan is important. It wasn’t always that way. A decade ago, social media wasn’t really a thing. Companies largely had to rely on traditional marketing methods. Today, the industry has evolved so much that if you don’t engage in social media marketing, you’ve missed the boat. Social media is certainly a collaborative outlet for people in general; for businesses who want to take their advertising potential to the next level, it’s priceless.

Share What You Know

Sharing relevant content with users puts you in the realm of subject matter expert. It’s not enough to SAY you’re an expert at something. SHOW them. There are two sides to this approach: first, you should share news that directly affects your company, such as holiday hours, promotions, fundraisers and seasonal menu changes; second, you should share indirect information such as YouTube videos, blogs, or white papers that further illustrate your expertise or explain a process.

Social media marketing should be a key part of your overall strategy of increasing visibility of your business.