Magnetic Design for Passionate People

This article was recently shared in the Women in Leisure Services Newsletter, January/February 2010 Issue.

Using social media to develop and strengthen relationships with your customers.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, oh my.  Social media is everywhere.  If you are not using it to grow your customer base, I highly recommend starting now.  It’s a great way to strengthen relationship with your customers and keep them in the loop.  Here are a few points to consider:

1.  Be Consistent.  Do it well or don’t do it at all.  Start with one platform (I recommend Facebook – with over 350 million users, you can’t go wrong) and get really good at it and then add in another rather than diving in and signing up for them all, ending up overwhelmed and not getting any value for your efforts.

2.  Be Authentic.  Look at what you do really well…what people know you for and highlight that.  Keep information real.  Create a buzz without being dishonest – for example, don’t say something is almost full if it isn’t.  People sense insincerity and that isn’t what you want to be known for.   Share things like you’re having a great time planning the upcoming season or preparing a flyer on an upcoming event or setting up for a program that evening.  It’s a great way to let people know what you have going on without blatant advertisements.  People like this.

3.  Give Them A Reason To Follow You.  Offer discounts and specials that are available only to those who follow you on a site or share information that is only shared on that site.  (Hint:  it doesn’t have to be all your information.  If you come across an article about the value of what you do or is related to your field and you think your customers might be interested in it, share it.  Become known as an expert or a resource in your field.)

4.  Encourage Others to Post.  Encourage your fans or followers to post.  This gets others excited about what you are doing and they want to join in on the conversations.  It’s a great way to get some testimonials from participants and have others see them too.

5.  Stay Current.  The trends are constantly changing but one thing is for sure…social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon.  Use it and pay attention to what the current trends are.  For example, people are moving away from groups on Facebook and using fan pages instead.  I personally wish they were called something else but it is what it is.  Fan pages are viral where groups are not (the whole purpose of social media).  Groups don’t tend to be very interactive where it is much easier to get people to post on a fan page.  I believe it’s because people know others will see their posts where they might not in a group.  There are also great resources out there like HootSuite.com that allow you to schedule out your posts to some of these sites so you can get something up regularly without having to be a slave to it.  I schedule out some of my content so I don’t have to remember to do it later.  I also have Twitter and Facebook linked so that what I tweet about shows up in my Facebook too.  Very easy to do.

6.  Promote, Promote, Promote.  If you don’t share, no one will know to follow you.  Have a link to your social media accounts on your website, in your brochure, on your flyers, on the emails of everyone in your department, on your voicemail…everywhere you can think of. 

7.  Most Important – Have Fun!  If you aren’t having fun with it.  That’s what it’s all about.  Life is too short to not enjoy it!