ADVICE
Guest
Expert
While it’s important to build a
following on social media sites,
it’s just as important to keep
that following engaged
SUCCEED-
ING WITH
SOCIAL
MEDIA
to boost your
social media
prowess
Tap into the creative spirit of your
store and engage your customers
on social media platforms
YOU SPENT A LOT of money on the front-
end of your social media campaign, incre-
mentally built your following on Facebook,
Twitter, You Tube, etc., and carefully crafted
flyers and an email campaign to promote
your social media sites. Your followers
steadily grew until you hit a plateau. Why
did it take so much effort to build your
following just for your drop-out rate to now
steadily increase? What many business
owners don’t realize about social media
is that while it’s important to build a
following, it’s just as important to keep that
following engaged.
Create great content. Posting interesting
anecdotes about the history of your business
or the story behind a certain product is sure
to create more buzz.
Add video. The average consumer responds
to video better than written content. Post
a video of a product demo or a special event.
The options are endless.
Use humour. Get customers laughing by relaying funny situations that take place with
customers, sales reps and employees.
Look at your competition. Keep an eye on
what your competition is posting and how
many followers they have. Then develop
your content in a more interesting way.
Team up. Make an agreement to swap content with another retailer, a manufacturer
or a service provider that complements
your business. Take advantage of the communities that you’ve already built and
cross-pollinate them through your social
media posts.
Look to younger employees. Put them in
charge of reporting to you once a week
about what the buzz is in the social media
realm. Have them come up with different
ideas, promotions or creative posts of interest and test them out in the market.
The content-rich aspects of social
media will attract, but more importantly
keep, your customers watching and
listening.
Genae Girard is an entrepreneur who regularly
speaks on the topic of women in leadership. She’s
the founder of www.beyondtheboobietrap.com,
an online social media tribe of over 23,000 breast
cancer survivors. She’s also the author of Off the
Rack: Chronicles of a Thirty-Something, Single,
Breast Cancer Survivor.
