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Posted on 17th September, 2010 | 1 Comment

Key points From Social Examiner Article

Engage your customers “where they live”. Steps to drive customers
to your retail business with Facebook and Twitter.

It’s becoming more and more important for retail shops, restaurants, hotels, and other local businesses to connect online with Social Media / Facebook & Twitter being the biggest. If you’re not online and taking advantage of this basically free advertising, you better believe your competitors are. Read  this  article very carefully.

Twitter is a people place, however it is also a place to do business.
Facebook involves setting up a business page. You should also have a Facebook profile that is linked to your  business page.

Now to find your audience ( potential customers ) on the net. Finding local people is an essential first step. With Twitter you can  use the search feature, you can limit your search to tweets within a geographic area while searching for specific terms such as  say a  florist might search for “anniversary” within 5 miles  of Scarborough. A restaurant might search for anyone within 10 miles of Ottawa, ON,  everyone  needs to eat right!

An advanced search will bring up all the recent tweets that meet the criteria, with the handle and avatar of the person who tweeted. From the results  you can follow these people or click on their profiles for more information. Since following a person often causes them to to follow you back, a certain percentage of these people will become your  Twitter followers.

Engaging Your Audience.

So you have followers, but that won’t bring them to your store. You must create a steady stream of content to engage them.

Some examples:
  Do you own a restaurant? You could post your lunch specials to your Facebook page and your Twitter Account. Include a photo. Ask your followers what they would like to see as daily specials? Run a little contest – name a dish (which requires them to first fan your page). When your fans start “Liking” your menu options,  their friends will see it, too on their facebook accounts. This is viral marketing for you at work.

• You can take engagement to the next level by talking to or about
   loyal customers of yours. Just mention their handle in a tweet. Maybe one of your most loyal customers is trying to sell his old
  truck on Twitter, so you retweet his message. How grateful do you think he would be?
• With Facebook, you can tag someone in an update. Since FB
  has a broader audience base, it’s probable that your update will
  be seen by more people (friends), especially if the person feels
  compelled to thank you in a comment to your initial post.

Incentive For Your Audience to Visit.

Building loyalty and connections with customers is a great long-term
success strategy. But, there are lots of ways to provide incentives for
your online audience to make an in-person visit :

•  Create Facebook- or Twitter-only discounts or coupons that people  can print up and bring in to your store. Make them good for one day only – it generates more visits to your page and  it also creates a sense of urgency. Thats important.
• Discounts create incentive to drive foot traffic to physical locations.
  Last-minute cancellation? Blast out to your audience that you have a  very sudden opening that afternoon for anyone who needs a massage or a mani/pedi.
•  You could announce a discount for anyone who walks in and mentions Twitter or Facebook when placing his/her order.
• Slow lunch? Announce a discount for anyone who walks in and mentions Twitter or Facebook while placing his/her order.

From Social Examiner – You can read the entire article here.

 Facebook and Twitter to Drive Traffic to Your Retail Shop