Not all of your social media marketing efforts should be spent at a computer or smart phone.

This post will give you some ideas of how to incorporate social media and hashtags into what you already do best.

Social Media is a great way to market your small business, but how do you get those ever so valuable followers and likes? Connecting online is one way. Talking and finding people with similar interests and who you might think are your potential customers. But there’s a bigger power with social media and that is connecting your existing customers to your online presence. So you need to promote it elsewhere and encourage them to engage!

This is where we can take a lesson from television.

They were maybe a little bit late in the game to do it, but now it’s exploding; hashtags that is. What TV shows are doing is taking all of their viewers who watch at the same time(live TV not PVR), and connects them through the use of social media. A show like Dancing With The Stars uses a hashtag on the screen to invite their viewers to comment about what’s happening on the show right at that moment! Or they can vote, and even get their comment displayed on the show later. Everyone who posts on social media with the same hashtag will be able to see what everyone else is saying and it’s and on going conversation. A list of a couple other top TV shows using social media can be found if you click here.

So instead of some marketing person from Dancing With The Stars posting on Twitter about Bill Nye dancing and expecting retweets and comments. They let the conversation between the audience do the marketing.

The big take away is that they are not USING social media themselves to drive engagement, but they’re making it fun and exciting for the customers to use social media around their brand.

Hashtag Sales

You can also use the power of hashtags for in store promotions. If you’re having a huge blow out sale, promote a hashtag around it like #SallysBOGO or whatever your business and sale are. This creates a place for your customers to be excited and share about what you’re doing. Similarly, tell them they get an extra 10% off if they post a picture of the product they’re buying on your Facebook page.

You’re probably getting it now, the point is to direct customers and audience to your social media about what they’re already doing right now in real life. It’s much harder to get people excited if you just post a sign on the street that says “Like us of Facebook”.

So go out and promote and incorporate your social media with what’s already going on in your business in real life. Connect your customers and let them talk about the activities rather than your social media posts.

– Joel Harrison