Engage your fans

Keep your social media relevant and informative

Engage your fans

Quite simply you have to offer something interesting. You have done the hard work getting people to engage with you in the first place, now you need to keep them. The key is to be friendly, informative and, most importantly, entertaining. That doesn’t mean you have to don a wig and do some juggling. Its called social media for a reason and you have something interested to say right?

If you are using twitter (I really hope you are) then make it good practice to thank everyone that has re-tweeted you and make sure you return the complement by doing the same. That’s not to say you must re-tweet everything back. Make sure you vet it and have belief that the tweet you are spreading adds value to your followers. Another great reason to re-tweet your followers is that they may just respond in kind and follow suit.

Are you engaging with other like-minded groups? Linkedin is perfect for that. Get involved and offer up some advice, tips and tricks. You can pick up followers by having a voice within these groups. Do a search and get involved. Who knows, you may pick up some great information that you can use yourself!

The reason you are using social media is to promote and gain clients. You can fall into a trap of over publicising yourself. If all your posts are ‘sell, sell, sell’ you will struggle to get followers or lose them when you get them. Use social media to inform and help your followers. A general rule of thumb is 6 posts of information to 1 selling. I know of others that have a ratio of 15 – 1. It seems as though you are giving all your valuable information for free. Building up loyalty takes time and you have to get your customers to like you first. Anyone in sales will testify to building a rapport first before getting down to the nitty gritty of the pitch.

Any social media programs that work have one thing in common – consistency! I cannot stress that enough. Updating your blogs, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook has to be done regularly. Can you write a blog a day? If you can you should! Twitter multiple times a day and Facebook just as much. Linkedin should be done at least once a day also. It seems a lot of work but you can get automated software to help you with this. I recommend hootesuite. An absolute time saver, that can help you send information out at peek viewing times.

If you are using twitter (I really hope you are) then make it good practice to thank everyone that has re-tweeted you and make sure you return the complement by doing the same. That’s not to say you must re-tweet everything back. Make sure you vet it and have belief that the tweet you are spreading adds value to your followers. Another great reason to re-tweet your followers is that they may just respond in kind and follow suit.

Are you engaging with other like-minded groups? Linkedin is perfect for that. Get involved and offer up some advice, tips and tricks. You can pick up followers by having a voice within these groups. Do a search and get involved. Who knows, you may pick up some great information that you can use yourself!

The reason you are using social media is to promote and gain clients. You can fall into a trap of over publicising yourself. If all your posts are ‘sell, sell, sell’ you will struggle to get followers or lose them when you get them. Use social media to inform and help your followers. A general rule of thumb is 6 posts of information to 1 selling. I know of others that have a ratio of 15 – 1. It seems as though you are giving all your valuable information for free. Building up loyalty takes time and you have to get your customers to like you first. Anyone in sales will testify to building a rapport first before getting down to the nitty gritty of the pitch.

Any social media programs that work have one thing in common – consistency! I cannot stress that enough. Updating your blogs, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook has to be done regularly. Can you write a blog a day? If you can you should! Twitter multiple times a day and Facebook just as much. Linkedin should be done at least once a day also. It seems a lot of work but you can get automated software to help you with this. I recommend hootesuite. An absolute time saver, that can help you send information out at peek viewing times.