Don’t Just Be There On Social Networking Sites, Be Active On Them!

While small and large businesses alike have realized the importance of being on social networking sites and connecting with a large user base audience directly, not many are able to harness that presence effectively, towards enhancing their own business prospects. Inactivity is a factor that businesses need to be especially wary of, if they are to really make an impact out of their presence on social networking sites.

We personally are aware of a lot of businesses, including some big corporate firms who started out big on some of the popular social networking sites, but eventually fizzled out, with their presence drowned among a host of other competitors, whose voices were differentiated and clearly stood out from them.

The biggest factor when establishing a presence on social networking sites, for any business, is to establish a CONNECT with the target audience. In the absence of that all pervasive, fundamental element of connectivity with the audience, your whole initiative of establishing an online presence via social networking sites, will be fruitless.

So, how do you establish this connect?

Key is to interact with those members in the target audience who actually have some interest or passion for the products or services that you have on offer. So, for instance, if you are into selling car accessories, it would save you a lot of time and effort, as well as get you that much better returns for your efforts, if you in the very first place, engaged in dialogue with those people who actually have a passion for cars and automobiles. Connecting with these people would be that much easier for you, than with people who may not have similar passion or be indifferent towards automobiles.

Just as important is the factor of receptivity of the aforementioned individuals; obviously, those with a passion for automobiles would be much more receptive to any information that you as a seller of car accessories have to give, than others, who would simply ignore it altogether or summarily dismiss it as forced promotion.

Once you know the right kind of people to interact with on social networking sites, it is important that you interact and engage with them constantly and continuously, respectively. Remember that attention span of people today is really very less, so as soon as you start to show even the slightest signs of inactivity, their attention would be drawn towards others.

Ways in which you could allow people to be constantly interested in what you have to communicate, include carrying out polls as well as organizing contests. Remember that given a chance, most individuals love to voice their opinion on whatever they are passionate about, in this case cars and automobiles, so creating a buzz among those in your group or community which will encourage them to speak their minds will definitely further your cause well. Similarly, thanks to the competitive instinct that we humans are naturally endowed with, organizing relevant contests will also stir their interest in your messages.

When it comes to gathering feedback from customers about your products and services, feedback forms where users can leave their comments and give suggestions are definitely invaluable. They give you a good idea in terms of your customer’s expectations, and how well you are meeting them. When you yourself are witnessed to be active on these forum postings, replying to people’s comments and suggestions, they too get a feeling that you care for them and are more available to their needs.

Finally, and most importantly, as we mentioned right in the beginning of the article, merely having an online presence on social networking sites is not enough. You need to engage with your audience continuously, updating any new information at your end, as soon as it happens (consider ‘Tweeting’ about this ‘breaking news’!). For instance if you are in the food catering or restaurant business, it would be highly beneficial for you to send out updates about any new recipe or dishes that you have started. With the right kind of buzz, within no time you will have customers queuing in to try out the new recipe that you have started.

Summing up, it is important that you maintain an active presence on social networking sites, if at all you are to make the most of your presence there. At the same time, make sure all your relevant and up-to-date contact details are clearly visible to users, so that they can suitably contact you directly, whenever they feel the need.

Hope you took some great value out of this post today! I’d love to hear your feedback, so make sure you leave a comment below with your thoughts or questions! Click the blue comment link below. Thank You!
To Your Business Success,

John Curran, Certified Master Coach and NLP Practitioner
Author, Teacher, Business Coach, and Inspirational Speaker
CEO and Founder of Coach Curran International
www.blog.coachcurran.com
curran_286@msn.com
Cell 603-903-2592

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