In the year since you opened your small business, everything has been going great. Your sales have been better than expected, and you are getting a steady stream of repeat customers who are happy to work with you. You’ve been so busy keeping up with all of the demands of owning a small business, you really haven’t had the time to use tools like social media and a company website to their full advantage.
In order to help your business achieve even more, it’s time to hop onboard with social media and other online tools. These days a website is the equivalent of a business card, Entrepreneur notes. Customers often want to look up your company from the comfort of their own home and then email you about your products and services. In order to do this, you have to be online. The following tips can help you to make an impact in the virtual world:
Build and maintain an eye-catching website
One of the best parts about building an website for your business, notes Socialnomics, is that once it’s up and running, your company is now open 24/7. While you are sound asleep at 2 a.m., potential customers from around not only Oregon but the whole country could be on your website, reading about your products and services. To help make a potential customer a regular one, make it easy for him or her to place an order through your site. For example, if you sell organically grown coffee, set up credit card payments and an shopping cart system on your site that allow people to choose the type of coffee, grind, and needed accessories. If you are not sure how to go about this, PayPal offers tips and advice to get started.
Jump in with both feet to social media
As Business2Community notes, social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are an incredible way to spread the word about your small business and engage customers. The key is to create a nice home page that includes a lot of details about your company, including the hours, website, email address and phone number, photos, and information about your products and services. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, look into other rapidly-growing sites like Instagram and Pinterest and see if your company would be a good fit.
Be an active participant
Once you have your pages set up, be an active member of the various social media communities. At least twice a day, post something funny, relevant, interesting and/or thought-provoking about your business, or maybe just something that happened in the Portland metro area (or wherever you are located in The Beaver State). Your goal is to get current and potential customers to “like” your posts, share them, and comment on them. Your posts can also ask questions about general trends or topics that can engage your fans to respond. A great example of this is the Drive Time Facebook page; a recent post asked people to name the best song from the 90’s. Even though this question doesn’t pertain to the company itself, it got people interested enough to reply and stay on the company’s page even longer. If someone replies to one of your posts or tweets, be sure to respond, even if it’s just a quick “thank you”—this will help to show them that you have read their response and that you appreciate it.
