Take Social Media Offline for More Exposure
If you’ve been watching the whole Social Media space for some time now, it probably has become apparent to you that there are three main channels that get used heavily by businesses, and that’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Why? Well collectively, that’s where most of your current and existing customers are likely to be.
Whilst getting involved heavily online is the most obvious and quickest strategy to gain more Followers, Watchers and Likers (notice I left out stalkers) - you should really start to utilise your offline channels and space in order to boost awareness of your channels and in turn see an uplift in your follower base.
How can this work? Well interestingly, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have started to push in this direction in order to increase take up of businesses joining the services. Let’s take a look as to what each platform is doing to help you with your offline promotion.
Well Twitter have no official activity going on in order to help businesses utilise and get on Twitter via offline promotion but they have recently announced their Twitter Business Centre to encourage business to have a more robust profile for business use.
However, some businesses have started to utilise offline Twitter promotion by advertising their profiles in their shops. One great example is that of Naked Pizza:
Recently, Facebook have been pushing businesses to get involved with promoting their services on their platform by sending out letters containing promotional codes for Facebook Advertising credits. Much like the Google Adwords mail that goes out - it’s designed to encourage businesses to dip their toe in the water of Facebook Ads.
Within the letter, they also include a window sticker for you to place nice and proudly in your store and to help you increase your fan base further.
An example can be seen below:
YouTube
So what have YouTube been up to? Well they have recently launched business cards to allow you to showcase your YouTube channel.
YouTube’s thoughts on this: “We want all video creators and curators to put their YouTube channel URL on their business card. In fact, we’d like to think your YouTube channel deserves a place right next to your email address and cell phone number as necessities in this modern world.”
It’s fair to say that more and more people are becoming aware of YouTube as a place to visit regularly. After all, it’s considered to be the second largest search engine after Google (yes - more searches are conducted there than Yahoo) - so why not make sure your contacts know you have a presence there?
As an incentive, YouTube were offering the business cards for free - just pay shipping and handling until 30th June.
Conclusion
So - there you have some ideas on how you can gain more exposure to your social media channels by taking them offline! It’s all so easy to get wrapped up in focusing purely on the online activity but if you have offline properties - put them to work for you!
Remember - people will need to know what’s in it for them to follow you, become a fan, or a subscriber to your videos. Make it clear that they will benefit by joining you in the form of exclusive information or special offers that only people on these channels can get hold of.
Also, give them a call to action! You need to tell them you want them to follow you, “like” your fanpage or watch your videos.
We would love to know if you have already taken your promotional efforts offline and what the results were - or if you are now planning to take this forward.
Let us know in the comments!
