People tend to do business with companies that they trust. An easy way for your business to gain more trust from your target market is by establishing yourself as the number one go to authority in your niche.
Establishing yourself as the expert could take time if you’re just now starting to build awareness for your brand. The good news is… it doesn’t have to be difficult thanks to social media.
Don’t know what to do?
Here are three simple ways you can use social networking as a way to build relationships and maintain an open dialogue with your target market online:
The first thing you should do is regularly update all of your social media profiles. So if you’re on two or three different social media websites, it’s important to keep all your profiles updated daily with new updates, posts, and statuses. This shows that you are active in the marketplace and that you care about communicating with your customers and followers.
When a new potential customer visits one of your social media profiles, he or she will see a hotbed of activity, which will make your business very appealing.
Another way of building your authority is to be helpful in your marketplace. An easy way to help people is to answer any questions they may have related to your industry or company. For instance, you can use Twitter to find people asking questions about subjects related to your product or service using Twitter search filters. Then, simply take a few moments to answer some of the questions that pop up. If you keep this effort up over time, you will become a known authority on Twitter, which will directly impact the amount of business you can generate there.
Finally, a great way to boost your authority is to create a “how to” style YouTube channel. Almost every business has subjects and topics that their customers and prospects would like to learn more about. If you can create a series of videos that answer these questions, you could build a huge following of loyal subscribers who anxiously await every video you post.
People will watch your videos, see you as a trusted source of information, and be more likely to do business with you in the near future.
These are just three ways to build valuable authority status using social media; there are many more. But this is a great place to start if you are looking for effective online strategies that can positively impact your bottom line.
