The CEO Series: A Word About Social Media

More and more clients are looking for ways to increase fans and followers within social media. Sometimes, the low hanging fruit can be a great way to leverage your current loyal customer base. It’s important to create an experience that is different than your website experience within social media. This can include special offers or promotions, unique content or packaged products, contests and sweepstakes, or just a unique and informal voice and community environment. I have jotted down some ways to use existing resources to build the social media fan base.

Below are 5 ways to use existing resources to promote and drive traffic to social media profiles.

Your website

• Include social icons on homepage
• Include feeds from your Twitter account and Fans on Facebook
• Make it easy for customers to share articles, products and content from your website with their friends and followers

Printed Materials

• Catalogues – include icons on front cover and within most popular product pages
• Shipping Materials – include an insert with special offer for Following on Twitter or Liking on Facebook

Email Marketing

• Include social icons and recent social media activity within email marketing
• Create FB landing page links from email campaigns with unique offers from website landing pages

Video

• Using a Flip camera or an iPhone create video and then upload to video channels on Facebook and YouTube
• Offer product demonstrations and short spots offering humor or tips & tricks

Blog

• Create blog posts describing your online social communities to inspire people to join
• Offer guest blogging opportunities to brand or product ambassadors or internal subject matter experts.  Promote these within social sites.
• Hint: you can also promote your blog posts and white papers using social media.  Just create Facebook posts or tweets mentioning the subject of the blog post and include a link to the content.