My social media efforts have been focused on the Halifax Dartmouth area for the last few months. I am trying to demonstrate what it takes to increase business visibility in an area.
The process of business proceeds along the funnel of “Know -> Like -> Trust“. If you do not create some “Know” about your business, you will not get the work you are looking for. If people don’t know about you, they cannot hire you.
So what does it take to get known? How do people find out about your business offerings? Here’s a few ways you might show up:
- Google search – but remember only 7% of people search beyond page 1
- Networking groups – meeting people face to face
- Family members – the know your elevator speech and can share what you do to others effectively
- Local advertising – a local news paper, for example, that actually produces leads and can be verified, as a lead producing source
- A referral network that you have built up over time.
These are just a few ideas. This list is no way intended to be exhaustive. What ever you decide to do, it has to produce business leads. What all the above bullet points have in common is this: they all end with a face to face encounter where possible. After all, until you shake hands or sign a contract, it’s not business from my perspective and opinion. All the goodwill in the world will not necessarily make business happen.
And since I do social media training, I will focus on consistency in your social media effort. Consistency is not a hit or miss effort. I am talking about regular daily posts, comments or tweets to be considered as consistent.
One of the things I see businesses struggling with is consistency. Some days they do some thing; other days they don’t. One has to remember that social media is feeding Google. If you want to make Google fat with your results, you have to consistently feed Google.
Now, I am not saying you have to force feed Google many times a day. What I am saying is that you have to be at least regular with a few posts; as many as the network will permit. On one network, you will only post once per day. On other networks, you will post more; like Twitter for example.
Social media is not a fad. It is a real marketing tool. If you want to see good results from social media, it’s going to take a regular consistent approach. You will need to set time aside to do your social media. And it will take effort. It will take time to build momentum. But it will produce results. So please try to be consistent in your efforts. If you have questions, please ask. Here’s to more business for you.
