Social media is something we all use on a day-to-day basis, whether we’re checking in with our friends or following the experts in our particular niche. Like it or not, social media is part of our daily lives and its definitely here to stay.

So why not take advantage of what it can offer you, when it comes to improving your business?

With such a wide variety of social media platforms available to you, it’s simply a case of picking the one best suited to your needs. For example, if you want to interact with professional business people, you need to be on LinkedIn. Want to get access to everyday people – check out Twitter or Facebook.

But how exactly can you use social media to improve your business? Follow these five simple steps.

Step #1: Build contacts

This doesn’t just mean accumulating like and fans – it means build a relationship with the people on your lists. The number of fans and likes you have, are just numbers. In order to build a list of CONTACTS, you need to be in contact with those people. They need to know you and interact with you – and you with them.

Step #2: Be seen

This follows on nicely from step 1. In order to build a relationship with your social media contacts, you have to put yourself out there. You have to be posting regularly and posting content that’s interesting to your audience.

Step #3: Raise your profile

By putting yourself out there, you’ll be helping to raise your profile. Another thing you can do is post content that shows you as an expert in your niche – so share interesting and relevant things, answer questions and offer advice, talk with authority and share your opinions.

Step #4: Create your own community

If you spend time building a relationship with your contacts, putting yourself out there and raising your profile as an expert, people will naturally be drawn to you. Your ideal customer will want to interact with you – so create a community of like-minded people where they can interact with you and others, such as a Facebook group. Like attracts like, so if you create a community for your ideal customer, more of them will come to you.

Step #5: Share events

Once you have built a relationship with your ideal customer, whether that’s just through your main profile or in the separate group you’ve created, you have a captive audience of people eager to have more from you. This is when you can offer them even more valuable content, in the form of your events and other offers.

These give you a perfect opportunity to continue giving more help and advice, whilst continuing to build your profile, interact with your ideal client and generally be seen as the ‘go to’ person in your niche.

This is why it’s so important that you take advantage of the various social media platforms available to you, if you want to improve your business. Once you start the ball rolling, you’ll be able to replicate and tweak it continuously, to help improve and grow your business on an ongoing basis.

How can you implement the steps within this article for your business? What action steps can you put in place now, to ensure you’re making the most of social media? Why not share your thoughts on social media for your business, in the comments box below?

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