James SpillaneSocial media marketing can be used to build strong relationships with your customers, 
clients, or website visitors who will then become fans or customers, and later advocates of your company. This is one of the best methods for growing your business.
Here are 20 tips you can use immediately to build strong relationships using social media marketing. If you need help implementing them please contact us about one of our Social Media Marketing services we offer.
1. Utilize Your Family and Friends
Ask for the support of your family and friends. Encourage them to become fans on your Facebook page or followers of you on Twitter. Also ask your friends and family to spread the word about your fan page.
2. Facebook Plugins
Incorporating a Facebook plugin into your website and/or blog is an easy and effective way to drive more fan traffic to your Facebook fan page.
3. Other Social Media Networks
Facebook is not your only tool for social media marketing. Be sure to keep your Twitter followers and LinkedIn group members in the loop.
4. Your Newsletter Subscribers
Send out an invitation in your newsletter to your subscribers. Invite them to join to your Facebook fan page, your Twitter following, even your LinkedIn group. Your newsletter subscribers are an excellent source of fan traffic that will actively help spread the message of your company.
5. Make More Use of Traditional Advertising Methods
When using traditional advertising for your business, such as television ads or radio ads, mention your social networking sites.
6. Physical Location
Interaction with your fans and customers is key. Provide details on where your shop/office can be seen or visited.
7. Your Existing Customers can be a Useful Tool
Use your existing customers to fuel social media marketing. Inform your existing customers about your website, blog, Facebook page, and other social networking sites being used. Getting your existing customers involved uses the most powerful tool of all, word of mouth.
8. Special Incentives will spark the interest of new fans
Using special incentives to get new fans on Facebook, followers on Twitter, or group members on LinkedIn. Offer special incentives such as access to exclusive content, your fans, customers, followers, advocates, etc, love feeling as though they are receiving something special.
9. Stimulate Interaction
Again, it is important to remember Facebook is not the only useful site in social media marketing. Use several social networking channels to keep your fans engaged and informed about other sites to obtain information about your business.
10. Ask Your Facebook fans to “Like” and/or “Share” your material
Asking your Facebook fans to help spread your message and “share” your material with their friends and family is a great idea. Word of mouth is an effective, easy, free way to continue your social media marketing.
11. Add a Welcome Video
Include a welcome video to your landing page. Use it to tell new members about your company, and what social networking sites your company can be found on.
12. Tag People and Pages on Facebook
When posting or commenting on Facebook, be sure to utilize the status-tagging tool. Using status tagging will alert the person or company when being mentioned. Simply use the @ symbol in front of the person or company’s name; yet another easy way to encourage interaction.
13. Have your Facebook fans tag your photos
Any live events you attend or hold be sure to take plenty of photos. Upload the event photos to Facebook, and ask your fans to tag any photos they are in, or recognize some one they know. Not only does this encourage more fan interaction, but also it will help your company gain more exposure.
14. Perform Facebook activities as your Facebook fan page
What better way to network on Facebook, than interacting with others on Facebook as your fan page? Putting your name out there for people to see, more attention will be drawn to your Facebook page, thus driving more fans to your page.
15. Sweepstakes and/or Contests
Sweepstakes and contests are the fastest way to increase your fan base. In order for this build up on of fans to be successful, you will need to utilize the Facebook app tool. The guidelines will provide all the information you need to run a successful promotion.
16. Take notice of your most active fans
Take notice of your most active fans, and take the time to say thank you. Use incentive programs such as “Fan of the Week/Month.”
17. The Facebook Questions Feature
The Facebook questions tool is an excellent, and simple way to interact with existing fans, and encourage some new fans. Poll your audience using a fun, relevant interesting, and intriguing question. This is a fantastic way to encourage interaction.
18. Utilize Facebook Ads
The best sources of traffic you can purchase are Facebook ads. Not only does it provide you a high volume of traffic, it will also allow you to see how many users are in your target market area.
19. Network with other website Administrators
Networking with other website administrators will allow you to build relationships with them. This will then open the doors for you to discuss ways to work together. Thus, increasing your social media marketing traffic.
20. Continue to Learn and Grow with Facebook
Facebook is another excellent communication tool. Your company can use Facebook for public relations purposes, research and development, recruiting, sharing information, etc. Make the most of this incredible media-marketing tool.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by James Spillane.
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Excellent tips Anthony. but the my best picks would be Tagging, posting as the Fan Page and rewarding the most active fan. Great job mate !
Thanks Eepen. Some tips are more well suited to certain types of businesses than others. For example, a B2C vs B2B should be taken into account, etc. Nice work in picking out which work best for you :)
Way to go Anthony. I will curate your article to my fans. Your tools are a must for attraction marketing. I have used Facebook ads in the past. But now since I am more educated in social media. I will try again.
Sure, give it another shot. Facebook ads are great for targeting people with specific interests. The best part about most of the tips here is most of them are free of monetary charge and just require a time investment.
Great tips Anthony! Hope I can use the article on my site (complete with attribution, of course).
Hi Mike,
Yes feel free to use it. If you do, it may be a good idea to make sure the page isn’t indexed by Google/search engines as you don’t want to add to your chances of a duplicate content penalty by the search engines.
Nice article! I especially love the idea of rewarding the most active fans- even if it just a shout out- to let them know you notice and appreciate then!
I think its all about creating that sense of community so that people who like your page with engage not only with you, but with each other and spread your content to new audiences.
The most important thing to remember when using Facebook as a marketing tool is that you need to be active and social! A static page isn’t going to get you much attention. Interacting with those that have opted in to follow you is a great way to keep followers interested.
That’s absolutely true. Too many small business owners make the fan page, don’t use it or work it, and then conclude that Facebook isn’t effective. Just like with a website, a Fan Page typically isn’t a “If you build it they will come” situation. It must be used to interact with and engage those who are interested in you, your brand, or your company.
I agree – social media is a great way to grow your online business. But if your business is based on selling products then Pinterest is one of the better social media sites to utilize – with twitter being one of the least effective. I wrote a more in-depth blog post about it here: http://www.get-money.org/how-pinterest-can-get-buyers-to-your-e-commerce-site/