5 ways to build your client base with social media

1. Find your target audience

With 72% of all web users active on social media, your potential customers are out there, and they come with a wealth of information. A single Twitter, Facebook,or Instagram profile contains the customer’s name, location, interests, and community of peers—think about what you can learn based on who they follow, and who follows them. More importantly, social media provides real-time updates about customer behavior, whether they’re tweeting about yoga, asking their friends if anyone knows a good personal trainer, or uploading pictures of their first guitar.

Know what social media sites your client base is using the most. The Pew Research Center has some great data about the demographics on different sites. Then build out a list of keywords and hashtags your ideal customer would be using in relation to your services, and search for your audience based on this list.

2. Discover a new customer persona

Businesses grow because they find new markets. The great thing about social media is that you can see who is interested in your service. You may be surprised! While targeting the audience you already know will be interested in you, make sure to pay attention to the types of customers who engage with your content. Who is retweeting you, sharing your pins, and commenting on your Facebook updates? Continue to update that list of keywords, hashtags, and bios when you see positive trends.

You’ll also learn what your customers are talking about and how they are finding you and your services. Social listening is all about being aware of your position in the community, and it’s as easy as tracking hashtags about your brand and active users in your space.

3. Make them notice with content

It’s one thing to find your customers, but to keep them engaged, you need to make yourself valuable, or at least interesting, for the time they spend on social media. Consistently sharing content, from blog posts to inspiring quotes to interesting articles, is the best way to keep yourself on the forefront of your customers’ minds. T.A. McCann of Rival IQ advocates a 5-3-2 rule for social media content. Out of every 10 tweets, Facebook updates, or other posts, five should be content from others, relevant to your audience, three should be content from you, and two should be something personal and non-work related.

Social media is about being social. Too many brands use it as their personal billboard to promote their services. Keep your community interested in who you are, and they’ll turn to you first when they’re ready to become customers.

4. Encourage positive recommendations

Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions, and social media is the new word of mouth marketing. The public nature and shareability of social media make it the perfect platform to turn your customers into your number one advocates. Retweet positive testimonials, and proactively reach out to your existing client base publicly to start high-visibility conversations.

Don’t forget about the importance of influencers on social media. Some people just have the right kind of appeal, and you can leverage their audience and their authority. Identify a handful of the leaders in your community, those with the greatest relevance and reach. Start by sharing their content and engaging in public conversations, such as comment threads. Over time, they’ll begin to share your content as well, and it never hurts to be direct and ask.

5. Start personal conversations

At Socedo, we generate the majority of our business through social media outreach. When customers follow us back on Twitter, we send them a personalized direct message, including their name, a conversation-starting question or remark, and a link to our website. We’ve found that these types of messages often have a 30-50% response rate. Use the conversational nature of sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to your advantage. By tracking which customers are already engaged and interested with your posts, you can focus your one-to-one selling efforts on those who are most likely to buy.

Social media is one of the only marketing channels where it’s encouraged to reach out to strangers and begin a relationship. If you take your conversation one step at a time (favorite a tweet, follow them, wait for them to follow you back, comment on their posts), your customers will be open to talking with you about your service.