Offer a peek
behind the scenes. Offering a sneak preview of new
products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide
critical feedback to help smooth the launch. For instance, John Doyle, founder of
chocolate company John and Kira’s in Philadelphia, posts photos
of new products on Flickr and invites
comments from customers.
2.Demonstrate what your company does.
Because multimedia is so integral to social media, getting connected allows you
to express your company’s value proposition beyond words. To show just how
powerful his company’s blenders were, Blendtec’s head of marketing, George Wright, created a
series of videos showing the appliances churning up such diverse items as a
rotisserie chicken, a Rubik’s Cube,
and an iPhone. The series’ 100
million combined views helped boost Blendtec’s sales by 700 percent.
7. Interact with visitors—really.
Just putting up a blog or a Facebook
fan page won’t do much good if visitors sense the flow of conversation only
goes one way. In fact, Matt
Mullenweg, founder of blogging platform WordPress, lists not participating in comments
as a surefire way to kill a community. Mullenweg and his team field the many
suggestions users have for WordPress
through his
16. Find potential customers.
A quick keyword search can help you find prospective customers who may not be
aware of your company but could nonetheless benefit from your product or
service. Bob Scaglion,
a senior managing director at New York real-estate management company Rose
Associates, generates 100 leads per month on Twitter for his company simply by
replying to users whose tweets include phrases such as “moving to New York City” and
“no-fee rentals.”
23. Help others promote you. Social
media can help you find passionate customers who are more than willing to
spread the word about your company. Crafts supplies manufacturer Fiskars
reached out to scrapbookers by inviting four avid users to blog. Its crafts
community, called Fiskateers, has since attracted 5,000 users who serve as
brand evangelists.
24. Cultivate relationships that lead to sales. Soon
after he joined Twitter, J.R. Cohen,
manager of The Coffee Groundz, a Houston coffee shop, began
encouraging his followers to visit him in his shop. He began getting to know
customers so well that they not only initiated conversations with him through
Twitter—they began tweeting orders through the site as well. Now Cohen
periodically fields menu requests through Twitter, though he doesn’t use the
page primarily for that purpo
26. Find ways to engage visitors offline.
In March, Cinda Baxter,
a retail consultant in Minneapolis,
ended a blog post on local business with one simple idea: choose three
businesses to support, and spend a combined amount of $50 per month. The post
spurred hundreds of inquiries—enough for Baxter to build a standalone website,
which has since attracted the support of more than 12,000 businesses. Baxter
has used the publicity to bolster her consulting business: she now travels nationwide
to advise retailers on building support within their communities.
27. Find influential people in your industry.
In addition to maintaining your blog, make sure to keep your eyes open to what
others in the industry are buzzing about online. Reading independent blogs and
joining industry groups on Facebook and LinkedIn is
a good way to join the larger conversation. Spoonflower, a fabric design site
based in Mebane, North Carolina,
has built its community of more than 40,000 users primarily through word of
mouth on crafts blogs.
28. Boost your credibility by helping others.
For service providers, establishing yourself as an expert in the field can
bring in a steady stream of business. LinkedIn’s
Answers feature enables business owners to do just that. Heidi Cool, a Web design
consultant in Cleveland, browses LinkedIn Answers for
inquiries related to her industry and spends one to two hours per week
answering them. In one month, she generated 29 leads for her services directly
from her responses.
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