Discover and Create Your Business' Advocates

Businesses are always looking for the heads-up on new and effective marketing techniques to reach customers - and although there's a plethora of new ways to achieve marketing goals, the old-fashioned ‘word-of-mouth' tactic is still just as important.

Why is word-of-mouth important?

Word-of-mouth is crucial in the World of social media. The strategy proves to be pivotal in increasing a business' awareness. For instance, let's say a customer shops at your small business. The majority of your customers will come in with a problem and it is your business' mission to solve it or at least give them a solution. Maybe your customer is hungry. Maybe your customer is in need of a suit for a wedding, or maybe your customer needs to buy a Christmas gift for a family member. If your business can help your customers with what they need in an efficient and effective manner, they most likely will share their wonderful experience with friends and family.

All of this is nothing new. As a business owner, you already know how traditional word-of-mouth works. However, the process is more effective when social media acts as the outlet for word-of-mouth. Let's say that same customer we talked about has a network of 900 Facebook friends (400 of those friends are local) and a Twitter following of 800 users (150 of them are local). The customer logs in to Facebook and says something like this about your business:

This customer is one of your business' advocates. The customer has just let his/her extensive social network know about your business. This is amazing word-of-mouth marketing and your business must capitalize on it. It's time to discover and create your business' advocates.

Ways to discover and create your business' advocates

Using these tools, your business will find its most influential advocates. If your business can't find influencers, then you need to create them with some of these strategies below:

Facebook

The most obvious way for businesses to discover their advocates is on their Facebook pages. If your business is not on Facebook then get to it! Make it a New Year's Resolution. See which users are "liking" your posts, posting to your wall and commenting on everything your business has to say. It's a no-brainer that these users love your business. Get to know who they are and use them for some word-of-mouth marketing.

Twitter

Twitter is a phenomenal marketing tool because of its search capability. Your business can find its influencers by typing the name of your business into the search bar. See who's talking about your business and once again, get to know them. Typing valuable keywords related to your business is a great way to find the influencers in your business' industry - create advocates for your business out of these influencers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is perfect for finding influencers in your industry. The networking website is beneficial for your business because of the forum of ideas and trends in your industry. Use LinkedIn to create advocates from relative industry leaders. Get to know who these leaders are and at the right time, help them understand what your business is all about. This will most likely build a healthy business relationship which you can leverage into some word-of-mouth for your brand.

Klout

Klout measures the social influence of a user. It measures the user's ability to create engaging content that drives action. The higher the Klout score, the better. Connect to Klout, type some keywords in your industry and see which users come back with the highest Klout scores. Once you find them, follow them on Twitter and begin to build a relationship with them.

Foursquare

I saved Foursquare for last because it is one of the most effective tools for discovering your business' most influential advocates. The ‘game-like' concept of Foursquare allows users to ‘check-in' to your venue to let their social networks know where they are. The benefit for your business is that you can see who checks into your business the most. In fact, the user with the most check-ins will be the ‘mayor' of your establishment. There is no way to better discover your business' advocates than Foursquare. Learn who your customers are and reward them for their continued service - with the hopes they will in turn talk about your business on their social networks.

There are so many benefits to connecting with your business' advocates. Using the strategies above, you are on your way to getting the most out of online word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

How does your business find its advocates? We would love to hear from you.