Perceiving Social Media as a tool to raise your brand /personal brand awareness and position yourself as an expert is fine, that's how most businesses approach social media and when done well, this approach really does work.

Many companies also identify potential clients through complaint platforms on Twitter -  as social platforms like Facebook & Google + now showcase customer feedback, there is an increasing amount of space for companies to answer any burning questions or feedback their customers might have for them:

Skittles Facebook Page

If what you offer is not something that customers normally purchase online, then your conversion goal  might be to receive a phone call or email, a contact form submission, an expression of interest in a seminar or event, or something else that captures personal details and qualifies the interest. These things would be good ways to tangibly measure the ROI of  your social media strategy.

An integrated approach is best  - if you're receiving interest from social media, you need to ensure the tools are there for customers to convert in the easiest way possible. For example, if your social media campaigns are linking back to your website, you should double check that the landing page in question includes wording that speaks to these referrals, easy ways for customers to reach you & possibly additional conversion options such as newsletter or blog subscription.

1. Know your Target Market 

Know their wants, their pain points, what do they search for, and base your social media strategy around that target market.

Tools like Quantcast can help you investigate and break down the audience for a selection of (mostly larger) web sites that have taken part in Quantcast’s system. If you are after a similar target market as a particular web site, then this could provide some very interesting information - geographic and demographic data, and keywords which indicate an interest in your product / service.

Taking these you can then explore for further related keywords using e.g. Google’s Keyword Planner and Google Trends.

2. Communicate in a Way that Fits your Audience

Assuming that your target audience will appreciate your marketing messages is misguided, you should be trying to identify the things your potential customers are looking for answers to and keeping informed about the trends they're talking about.

Tools like SocialMention and Topsy are really useful for this. Mention.com can also help you keep track of any positive/negative mentions of your company. the  products you sell, and your competitors. Companies may also benefit from researching Amazon & Ebay reviews too.

You'll probably find that posting at certain times has an effect on the level of response / clickthrough you receive. Some people suggest that you should split test tweets, repeating a tweet every few hours, then track which gets more clickthrough.

If you don’t feel that’s too much to do manually, there are various online tools that can help. Tweriod recommends the optimum time to tweet based on followers and Tweetwhen shows you the best times to tweet based on your last 1000 Tweets.

4. Prioritize the Right Metrics 

Generating likes, followers and monitoring your Klout score is useful to an extent. However it is wise to remember this can mislead, generating clickthroughs, engagement & actual inquiries is far more valuable in the long run. Most platforms offer inbuilt basic monitoring tools for basic social media metrics, if you're looking for something a bit more powerful, we recommend True Social Metrics.

5. Don't be too Corporate or Pushy

Voicing your offering is a good start, but creating and sustaining a voice and personality is essential. Social media is by definition, social. If your posts are always sales motivated, the reality is that fewer people are likely to engage with you.

Image via cutandchicvintage under creative commons license 2.0.

6. Use attractive images all the time

This is a given for platforms like Pinterest and Instagram, but if you add a status update to a Facebook business page with no image then that’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. You've got a lot of competition out there, and an abundance of text posts is unlikely to catch anyone's eye.

Hootsuite and other tools are invaluable for posting one message multiple times or scheduling content over a period, massively helpful for busy small businesses.

However it can also get too easy to rely on these things sometimes. You can save a lot of time with these tools but try also to tailor your posts across social platforms and to intersperse with real time engagement when you can.

8.  Use the Appropriate Channels for your Business

For example, a clothing brand would work very well on a visually heavy platform like Pinterest, but a bookkeeping company is likely to do less well. B2B businesses may also struggle to make Facebook work as well as Twitter when it comes to lead generation, depending on sector. Media companies tend to work well across a range of platforms for different aims.

If you find one or two channels work well for you (and can deliver the volume you need), then why not concentrate on making those work better rather than spending time on others. Your organization probably doesn't need to be on every social media channel on the web.

9. Watch your Timelines & Respond in Good Time

Particularly where you have complaints, or people are letting off steam after a ‘full and frank’ discussion with your customer service department, leaving something unanswered for a long time may suggest to others that  your customer service levels are lacking.

Faster responses look better but not all organizations can justify having a member of staff constantly monitoring social media. However, you can easily setup emails or text notifications, and ensure that at least once daily, these things are being checked.

Don’t ignore compliments either – they can nurture loyalty. Here's an interesting article from the Guardian giving some more tips for handling online feedback.

10. Plan your Social Competitions & Offers

If you decide to offer a social media-based competition of some sort, try to make sure that whatever you’re offering as a reward doesn't cannibalize sales or make people hold off on a purchase to see if they’ll win a discount voucher. e.g. a week will help to get recipients looking around a website now rather than putting it off and then forgetting about it.