The Fisherman’s Guide to Using Social Media

Fishing by jakesmome

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re  looking forward to the start of the Salmon season , so bear with me as I loosely apply age-old fishing imagery to improving conversion with social media.

Step 1: Bait Your Hook. Offer up some bait on your social networking sites.  Look for questions people are asking online about your field, and have one of your employees visibly help them out. Announce a giveaway for your fans and followers, preferably with one of your own products or services if appropriate, or at least an iPod.  Be the nice, doting company that lumbers about the social sites doing good deeds, selling stuff on the side just for fun.

Step 2: Hook ‘em. Maintain relationships in your network.  Treat inquiries from these sites just like any other potential client.  Send out updates or other worthwhile content on a regular basis, just often enough so they’re hooked.  Here’s where you find the biggest cost of social media: time.

Step 3: Reel ‘em. Always provide a clear and obvious line back to your main website or location that allows your fans and followers to purchase or get information.  Make the trip short and sweet.  Get visitors to the relevant products or services immediately. You don’t want to force visitors to search for what they expected to find easily. Maintaining a strong link or relevance between your social media networks and your website will improve your conversion rates.

Step 4:. Set ‘em loose and get ‘em talking (nicely) so you can start again with Step 1. The best means of improving conversion with social media is by word of mouth.  If they’re a fan of your organization, and they just purchased something from you, chances are they’re going to talk about it with their friends.  Give a customer a bad experience and you’ll be reading about it all over the web.  But give them great service and a product they need and like and they’ll tell all their friends and relatives to go to your website.  Make sure they’re happy, and if not, find out why and fix it quickly.

When you’re searching for information or making a purchase, do you do a search on Google or Yahoo, or do you get referrals from your friends and family?  Has that  (search engines vs. referrals) changed over the last year?   What we’re seeing is that the trend towards referrals or using social networks to help “discover” products or services is increasing.

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