Last week I wrote about how networking can get you in front of the 60% of prospects who don’t yet know you exist but probably need your services. Today I want to write about how social media can get you there.

Many of the businesses who are successful with social media in this way will be the ones who sell impulse purchases. Restaurants are a good example of this. Perhaps you are getting ready to go home and you check Twitter before leaving the office. One of the restaurants you follow has tweeted about a menu item and posted a picture. You look at it and think how good it looks. Before you saw the tweet, you didn’t have an intention of dining out, but that tasty-looking picture changed your mind. Before you checked Twitter, you were in the 60%–you needed food but weren’t actively considering a restaurant for that evening.

Retail stores can do the same thing. Posting a special to a Facebook page or a video of a new product on YouTube can create either a need or an urgent want for your product. Again, the prospects might not have been thinking about your product, but the social media interaction nudged them in a direction they were willing to go.

Obviously, you’ll want to be honest in your offerings. If you say you have something, make sure it’s in stock at the price indicated. Sure, you can trick a prospect into your store, but you won’t keep them, and they won’t come back.

You’ll notice I mentioned the use of pictures and video. We’re more likely to want something if we’ve seen it. The visual will trigger other sense or experiences. If we see the mouth-watering dish, we’re more likely to imagine ourselves eating it than if we just see a description. Use every technique at your disposal to enhance your odds. Creating the idea of scarcity is also effective. If we see a cool gadget and also see there are only 10 left, we’re more likely to give into the impulse to buy.

Okay, that works for impulse purchases at retail stores and restaurants. What about service businesses? Can you use social media to attract the 60% pool? Of course you can. And blogging is your most effective tool. If you give away information to introduce potential prospects to solutions you can provide, especially if those solutions are unusual in some way, you will attract people to say “Tell me more about that.” From “Tell me More,” you can ask questions to determine their needs and how you can meet them. If they reach out to you to ask, they are unlikely to start shopping your competition.

These are just a few ways to use networking and social media to attract clients who might not otherwise seek you out. Anyone else have any ideas to share? We’d love to hear about them in the comments!

Tags: blogging, Referrals, social media

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 7:59 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.