How to Find Your Customers on Social Networks

Filed in MY BEST POSTS, Social Media by Matt McGee on April 4, 2012 9 Comments

facebook-like-iconFor business owners, there’s no point in using a social network if your customers aren’t there, too. If your customers aren’t on Twitter, there’s not much reason for you to be there, either. If they’re not using Google+, there’s not much reason for you to use it.

Pretty much the whole world is on Facebook at this point, so it’s fairly easy to justify at least setting up a Page and, at minimum, using it as a listening post for customer service.

But then it gets complicated. What other social network sites are your customers, and potential customers, using? Where should a small business spend its time and energy for the best possible ROI?

There are some very powerful (and spendy) tools that can help you locate your target market on social networks, but I want to keep it simple. Here are a few basic ways to find your customers on social media.

Face-to-Face Opportunities

I bet you’ve seen signs like this many times:

facebook-sign

If you run a business that customers visit:

  1. advertise your social media accounts as visibly as possible, like in the sign above … but don’t just stop there
  2. train employees to start informal conversations about social media like “Did you know we offer discounts via Facebook?”
  3. train employees to ask customers what social media sites they use and what social networks your business should use, then make sure they take notes about what the customer says

You’ll get some anecdotal feedback this way and, if you get enough good replies, you may get a better sense of which sites (other than Facebook) your customers are using.

If you run a business that visits customers at their location, you’ll have to get a little more creative:

  1. signs on your vehicle
  2. hand out flyers that teach customers how to find you socially
  3. start those same conversations mentioned above if/when it’s appropriate

Do a Short Survey

It’s easy to setup a simple online survey via SurveyMonkey or Polldaddy. Ask the same kinds of questions I mentioned above:

  • What social networks do you actively use?
  • Which social networks would you recommend our business use as a customer service tool?
  • etc.

You can also go beyond surveys — use your print or online newsletter to ask for feedback from customers. Include an insert in the monthly bills you send out. Add a couple questions to your online contact form.

Every communication you have with a customer is a chance to ask them for some guidance about social media usage. Explain to them that you’re learning to navigate these new opportunities and the growth of your business depends on being able to keep in touch with customers socially. You won’t get anywhere near a 100% response rate, but you should get useful info from the customers that care the most about you and want to connect with you on their favorite social networking sites.

Your Website Analytics

This is the most concrete and reliable way to learn what social networking sites your audience is already using.

Look at the “Referring Sites” to find social networks that are sending you traffic. Or, if you want to get a bit fancy and you’re using Google Analytics, learn how to set up an advanced segment for social media tracking. (It’s easier than it sounds.)

Here’s a look at the social media sites sending traffic here to Small Business Search Marketing so far in 2012:

social-referrals

I fully expect Twitter (t.co) to be tops on this list; I frequently share links to my articles on Twitter. But you know what? I spend zero time promoting this blog on Facebook — and, despite that, it’s the second-biggest social referrer I have.

This is a clear signal: My audience is using a social networking site that I’m not using. Clearly, I should be doing something differently with Facebook since there’s already interest there in my content, even without me trying.

Look at your website analytics. Find where visitors are coming from. If there are social media sites sending you traffic even though you’re not active there, BINGO! You’ve found your audience, or a least a portion of it.

Bonus Ninja-Style Method

If you have a customer mailing list, there’s one more thing you can do.

Many social networking sites offer a “Find Friends” tool. Typically, you either upload a list of email addresses, or you connect your webmail account, and the site will tell you which email contacts are active. Here’s what Twitter’s tool looks like:

twitter-find-friends

If you use that tool, Twitter can tell you which of your contacts/customers are already on Twitter. You can do the same thing across different social networking sites — not to stalk your customers, but to learn how many of them are on each service. It’s just for research. Use this option to learn which social media sites are most popular among your existing customers. Don’t use it to start spamming unwanted messages their way.

Closing Thoughts

Again, these are a few simple, low-budget ways to identify what social media sites your customers are using. Once you know where they are, you can make smarter decisions about how and where to spend your time and marketing energy.

Don’t waste time on social networks if your customers aren’t there already.

(Store sign used via Creative Commons, thanks to SierraTierra on Flickr.)

Comments (9)

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  1. Roger Hicks says:

    Although I have promoted several clients’ businesses via their social media pages, this post provided me with a better follow through strategy. It’s amazing how many businesses do not know how to engage customers via social media. For instance, a local bank asked their Facebook fans “What is your favorite salad bar condiment?”. Yikes!

  2. Great article, we see all too often that many small business owners are spending too much time on social media sites because they feel they need to…They’re not entirely sure what message they’re trying to get across or the long term aim of their social media campaign but are on mainly because it’s what everyone else seems to be doing!

  3. Chris Agro says:

    Great article. I also have used nimble.com which has a social tool that once you upload or add your contacts will seek out and link their social accounts across a wide range of sites (Facebook, Linked-in, Tweeter amont them). Learn more about them and see what they are posting, all within one dashboard.

  4. Jim Theobald says:

    Sheez, I have been endlessly exhorting the owners of my workplace to a.) get with the flyers and signs for promoting our social media, esp. our newsletter, for which we have an actual physical kiosk, b.) rally the workers to start casually leading customers to our social media pages (I’ve even used non-too-subtle hints for our wi-fi passphrase , such as ‘facebooktopdog’, etc.). We have such a good product, I am more than convinced that if we diligently promoted ourselves, our online whole coffee beans could skyrocket, rather quickly. We are already extremely successful as a retail store, I wanted to leverage all the walk-ins (we have HUNDREDS of new customers to our coffeeshop each week, most are tourists!) and at least let them know that we mail order coffee! Hasn’t happened yet, although I am trying to light a fire, Jack Canfield style, to get them to understand and act upon this. I am so enthusiastic about our product that I took over our website, updated it, installed a wordpress blog, created a newsletter, beefed up our FB and twitter presence (to my delight, mostly with the awarenesses you proscribe). I guess I just have to keep pressing on! Thanks for the inspiration! ~Jimmy, @topdogcoffeebar

  5. We’ve started putting our Facebook address on all our electronic and hard-copy mailings with the tagline “Like us for special offers not found anywhere else”. It turns out people really will log in and friend request us after seeing it. Our fan list has been growing a lot more since we’ve starting doing this.

    It got me thinking about this commercial on tv just the other day for Always brand maxi pads with the obligatory “Like us on Facebook” title flash at the end. Out of curiosity, I checked their page out to find it had over a quarter of a million likes…for a maxi pad. It blew my mind.

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