You’re finally getting the hang of this social media “thing” for your business. Maybe you’ve built a strong presence on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn, a blog, or 
something else – and you find you’re enjoying it. The only thing is, you want to grow it. You want more fans, more followers, more pins, more comments. Like so many people in the social media world, you’re learning that simply because you build it, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily come.
Like anything else, you need to promote your social media presence everywhere. Here are six suggestions for doing just that.
1. Email Signatures. The thing you need to remember about email signatures is that they can get stale if you keep them the same forever. Instead, modify them every couple of months. You needn’t promote every social medium you’re on. Choose the one you’re most active on, or choose the one you’re committed to building up. Get creative with how you promote your presence as well. For example, maybe you offer a free white paper to fans on Facebook. So in your email signature, instead of just including the Facebook logo and a link, include a call-to-action: “Claim your free white paper on this Awesome Topic now. Just like us on Facebook.”
2. Your website. This sounds obvious, but we’re always surprised at how many businesses overlook promoting their social media presence on their websites. You needn’t include social media icons on every page – in fact, if you include them on every page, they might fade into the background and not be noticeable. Instead, think of your visitors and what would make sense for them:
- Home and contact pages. If someone comes to your site specifically looking for your social media info, where would they look? The home page and contact page are obvious choices.
- About section. You can include the company-specific social media icons on your main about page, but then on each person’s bio (you do highlight your team, right?), you can include individual social media info, such as individual LinkedIn accounts, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. Of course, if you’re inviting site visitors to link directly with employees, you should make sure you provide a disclaimer that the views of your employees don’t necessarily represent those of your company (and you should have some internal guidelines in place for your employees to follow). Don’t force employees to share their individual accounts, even business-related ones like LinkedIn, unless they want to.
- Thank-you pages after someone fills out a form. If someone takes the time to fill out a form on your website, he or she has shown an interest in your business and what it has to offer. So this person — this lead — is poised to become an ideal fan, follower, etc. for your social media portals. Be sure to include a thank-you page with every form (and, ideally an auto-responder email) that includes links to all of your social media accounts.
3. Cross promote. If you’re on multiple social media platforms, don’t forget to cross promote between them. For example, if you’re on Twitter and Facebook, do occasional tweets reminding people you’re on Facebook. Then, do the same thing on Facebook: remind people you’re on Twitter, share your handle, and invite fans to leave their handles in the comments if they’re on Twitter.
4. Don’t forget your advertising. The best thing your advertising can do for you (besides yielding sales) is to get people to connect with your company so that you can continue marketing to them. Focus on ONE social media portal at the bottom of your ad. If space allows, do more than simply include the social media logo – include the actual URL to your account. Just make sure it’s clean and clear, like the one we have for Facebook: Facebook.com/AmsterdamPrinting. This is 
known as a vanity URL, which you can create easily on Facebook here.
5. Ditto on all printed and virtual correspondence. Think invoices, sales letters, email confirmations, receipts.
6. Promote it on your promotional products. Again, if you’re on a bunch of social media portals, be sure to choose one to promote on your promotional products, like the custom mug featured above.
Need more social media helps? Read our blog post: 10 Easy-to-Digest Small Business Social Media Tips.
How do you promote your social media presence? Share your tips in the comments.
