Social media has changed the way we do business in the new millennium. In order to stay competitive, you must come up with unique ways to capture the attention of your target market. Here are ten ideas for using social networking sites to engage customers and grow your business.
1. Create a Cult of Personality – People follow people not corporations. Create a persona (like Mr. Clean) that would interact with customers on a personal level.
2. Tweet Trivia – Every day or week, as time permitted, tweet a piece of trivia relevant to your industry. This works best in conjunction with a blog or static website where visitors would click through to view the answer.
3. Facebook Fan Deals – Create and give away special coupons to people who are your Facebook Fans. The same could be done on Twitter.
4. The Complaint Department is Open – Use all social media channels to track down complaints (and praise) about your company, product, or service and resolve the issues. You could also set up a specific social media channel for problem resolution.
5. Look, Listen and Learn Contest – Have a contest where participants have to watch a video on YouTube and then Tweet in the answer to various trivia questions to win cool prizes.
6. Tweet My Video Contest – Have entrants post a YouTube video on their website and Tweet the link for an entry into a contest. Give extra points to people who actually blog their opinion about the article for additional promotional coverage.
7. Internet Scavenger Hunt – Participants would visit several pages on the internet looking for answers to a list of questions. This promotion could involve all the social media channels where the company is active as well as the corporate website.
8. Facebook Fans United – Designate a day where the company’s Facebook fans (or Twitter Followers or MySpace Friends) all post on a topic to drum up awareness about it. For example, Breast Cancer Awareness. Dedicate a page on the corporate website listing the entries.
9. Tweet-A-Product-Suggestion – Ask Twitter Followers to suggest future products or product features they would like the company make. Asking customers what they want is a surefire way to develop a product you know will sell.
10. Where’s Waldo Contest – Have a contest where followers have to tweet the location of sale’s team as they travel the countryside. Foursquare is a great location based social networking site that may assist with this.
About the Author
Delish iBusiness provides internet business development tips that move you from daydreams to profit. Business ideas, marketing advice, tools, and more for building a delish online business.
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