What Need to Be Done to Drive Followers Into Potential Customers

What tips do you have for a small business for managing social media to gain potential customers, rather than just followers? originally appeared on Quora: the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world.

The most important thing to do to create customers rather than followers is to create value. Your customers have to feel that they know you and that you fill an important role in their life.

My wife owns a very successful dog rescue (in terms of dogs saved, dog rescuers are not going to get rich). She has a webpage, she is also on several dog adoption sites, and is on a couple of social media sites. Despite this, 99 percent of her business comes from Facebook.

One of the social networking tips that marketers will give is the 5:3:2 rule. Out of ten, five posts should be third party industry related posts, three posts should be industry related posts generated by the business, and two posts should be personal posts designed to build your story.

I read this rule and realize that my wife had been following it all along. It was something she discovered on her own through trial an error.

Why does it work? Because she provides value. She jokingly calls herself the Ann Landers of the weiner dog world (she specializes in Dachshunds). People ask her questions in her feed, and she provides answers, without ever expecting to get something back. She gives the answer hoping that she solves that person’s problem. She doesn’t need to adopt more dogs because there are always dogs to adopt. You don’t need to make every sale, because there are always more sales to make. That low pressure environment help keep bringing people back to her page.

Providing knowledge is not the only way she provides value, she also makes her page a fun place to go. She posts funny pictures of her dog in costumes or funny memes or by relating funny anecdotes of her day. The important thing is that she keeps her page active.

How many times have you gone to a page to discover that the page owner has not added anything in a week? Two weeks later you go back and still nothing. How long is it until you stop going to the page. Don’t let that be your page. People have told her that they go to her page first thing every morning.

Be careful though. Social media is designed to keep you on the site. Create a schedule. Visit your page two, maybe three times a day. Have a plan for what you are going to post, post it and get off the page or next thing you know you have spent an hour watching cat videos.

Set a timer if you have to, and tell yourself that you are going to spend ten minutes posting your content and then you are going back to running your business.

Contributed by Dennis Mosburg, Coach and Mentor, he has a Masters in Management and Leadership.