Using social media to speak to your clients
In today’s guest post Mei Qi Tan shares her expertise about how you can use social media to benefit your coaching business.
Using social media to speak to your clients
‘I don’t get this Twitter thing. Why on EARTH would anyone want to know what I’m doing, if I’m sitting on a toilet or picking my nose?”.
Sound familiar? I’m sure we’ve all heard this exclamation before.
Well, that person is right. No one is interested in you, and no one is interested in what you say. Unless of course, you’re saying something of interest to them. Using social media at its basest level is providing an unfiltered, running commentary of your day in thoughts, experiences and happenings. People who know you personally will probably find this more interesting than people who do not. For your followers, it’s the lure of inner-circle access and the empowerment of being in-the-know.
In a business sense, followers are customers, or potential ones at that. If someone is following you, then they’re interested in what you have to say. Creating a link between a potential customer and your business is easy – just make sure the ‘submit’ button on your website enquiry form is clear enough. Maintaining and growing that initial contact into a long-standing relationship between client and company however, is a different story.
Historically speaking, only large companies could afford to make their voices heard in the marketplace. Large budgets = More marketing. The rise of social media has allowed small businesses to be more competitive, foster a community online, and be able to attend to their needs personally. Using social media to speak to your customers creates opportunities for creative expression, and is an ongoing exercise in genuine customer service and new discoveries.
But social media is not the ‘new’ marketing. Rather, its rising use across generations and demographics represents a new tactic of marketing, particularly for building your personal brand.
Using social media for small business is like building a house, then maintaining it. The bricks-and-mortar of any small business or freelancer is your relationships with clients. The overarching structure holding it all together, is you. The furniture and objects you place in your House include your tweets, status updates, blog articles, Delicious bookmarks, forum postings, repostings of interesting content that relates to the business; in a nutshell, it’s anything and everything you say online. You are responsible for what you place in your House – if it doesn’t look right or more importantly, feel right, then it shouldn’t be there in the first place. If your clients like what they see, they’ll move in. But it doesn’t stop there – you’ll need to keep maintaining your property, and performing upgrades where necessary to keep your tenants happy and from moving out.
Maintaining these relationships requires a plan that is structured and strategic. It involves having to create a brand persona that’s consistent – constructed from the tone of your interactions with others (followers and dissidents alike), and enriched from related content you’ve discovered online that applies to your business and its customers. Using social media for your small business isn’t just about telling others what you think, it’s about listening, responding and anticipating what your customers might want. And if they want to hear about you sitting on a toilet or picking your nose, best to stick to a description under 140 characters.
Using Social Media for small business at a snapshot
- Adopt a consistent and positive tone for all online communication eg. When responding to a complaint made in a public space like Twitter, always address the feedback publicly “I’m sorry for your bad experience, we would like to offer you a complimentary meal to make up for it”
- Post content that is relevant – Not only should you post interesting articles or videos that relate to your business and industry, but you should also make sure your content is optimised with metadata tags and key words, which make it relevant to the search engines
- Make sure your website is user-friendly – This is the base that all the content you post online should direct your followers to. If it’s not up-to-scratch, the only figures that will be soaring will be your bounce rates
- Measure, measure, measure! Use free tools like Google Analytics to find out how many incoming links to your website are generated through social media. Have a look at Facebook Insights to see demographic profiles of who’s viewing your business’ Facebook page, and sign up for a bit.ly account to track the number of clicks and re-tweets of your links on Twitter.
About the Author/Further Resources
Mei has recently arrived in London from Sydney and is embarking on a Masters Degree in Electronic Publishing. She is also working part time for Hubworking, contributing to their social media activity.
Note from Jen; the owner of Coaching Confidence, this coaching blog: For those who don’t already know Hubworking provides Ad hoc, pay as you go meeting space for businesses in central London. If you are looking for a coaching or meeting room in this area it’s a great resource.