Social Media Strategy for Brick-and-Mortar Locations Includes Local SEO

A social media strategy is necessary for those brick-and-mortar stores who are looking to expand and grow, even as the economy slowly recovers. The successful ones are using social media to bring people into their stores and increase their customer base, rather than finding new ways to cut costs or add new product lines. Here are a few ways to do this:

1) Identify your target customers

The first step of your social media strategy needs to be to identify your best customers, and then figure out how to find more local people like them online. There are several tools like Twellow.com and Facebook that will let you find only the people you want to connect with. Your social media strategy needs to be about strategic growth, not blasting your network with out-of-towners who will never visit you. Avoid those "get followers fast" websites, and focus on finding likely customers. Your social media strategy needs to be about bringing people into your store, not finding people who only want to sell you something and aren't interested in you beyond that.

2) Focus on two or three social networks

Your social media strategy should focus on just a couple of strategies, like Twitter marketing and search engine marketing. Create a Facebook business page if you're a B2C business, and a personal LinkedIn presence if you're a B2B business.

Follow the appropriate social media strategy for each social network. On Facebook, it's about providing useful information to, and having fun discussions with, your friends, customers, and fans; on LinkedIn, it's about making connections and providing value through discussion forums and the Question & Answer section.

3) Focus on providing value, not broadcasting ads

Your social media strategy needs to be about creating relationships, not sending out commercials. No one ever became a raving fan because of a commercial. They became raving fans because of the value and customer service you provide, and the relationship they have with you and your staff.

Create relationships with the people you're trying to reach. Talk with them about the things they're talking about. Treat them like friends, not strangers, and they'll come to your store just to meet you.

4) Measure Your Social Media Strategy

The great thing about a social media strategy is that you can measure it from start to finish. You can't do that with traditional marketing. If you put up a billboard, you won't know how many people see it each day, or how many people visit your store solely because of it. But with social media marketing, you can know how many people visited your website, read your Tweets, or "like" what you do on Facebook.

You can create special marketing campaigns and giveaways, promote them on Facebook and Twitter, and then measure the results. Best of all, you can see which campaigns resulted in higher sales. And because you know the end results, you can discard what didn't work, tweak what did, and make it more successful each time.

Related articles

• Social Media Strategy: Change the Conversation (customerthink.com)