C is for Customer Connection

This is a series of 26 posts. Although it speaks to Women Entrepreneurs, I hope it will help anyone who is thinking of setting up their own business.
You may read the previous post here.
A is for Ambition 

B is for Business Plan

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C is for Customer Connection

You can't sell if you don't have customers. You won't have customers till you forge a connection with them. No one wants to buy from a stranger. Even when you go to buy simple things like tea or toothpaste, you have a specific brand that you purchase. This brand awareness comes from having used the stuff before, and the trust that you place in the continued quality control that the brand maintains.

When you are starting out as an entrepreneur, you need to build up awareness of your brand. By now you should have a good idea about what your business is offering for sale. This will automatically give you a sense of who is likely to be interested in buying from you. It's now time to build a relationship with your potential customers so that they can be enticed to buy things from you.  

How do you build a relationship with people who you have never met before? Start with establishing a reputable social media presence. Most women entrepreneurs will agree that their potential customers can be found online. Depending on the demographics, you will have to establish accounts in the name of your business on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and LinkedIn. 

Please ensure that the business accounts are different from your personal accounts. This is very important for brand building. Do invite your friends and family to like your posts, but keep your eye on the target of finding new people who may be interested in what your business offers. The idea is to grow an organic audience by helping them with problems that may be resolved by your services or products.

Don't hard sell your products, instead offer advice that helps. The more value your posts provide the potential customers, the more likely they are to follow you on social media. Make friends with them, build a relationship, and offer your expert opinion. Have a limited number of selling posts. Maybe once a week is enough. The rest of the posts should offer value for the time that they spend reading it. Depending on your niche in depth articles or helpful links can be provided.

Ensure that you are regular. Having a ton of social media accounts is of no help when you are not available to respond to queries on them. Start out with a couple of accounts that you feel will be most helpful in terms of customer growth. Then move on to generating regular content for these sites. You can always scope out the competition for ideas related to the content to provide.

The Exercise 

What You Will Need: Social Media Accounts and Content to Share

Get started by creating accounts of your business on different social media websites. If you are a tech savvy person, go the whole hog and create accounts on everything. If you are new to this, just pick a couple of websites to start with. You should practice using the interface of the website before you make any posts public or share them with a wider audience. Test what looks most effective on the computer as well as the mobile phone view.

Ideally think about where your potential customers are likely to be hanging out, and begin with those social media websites. For instance, if you are hoping to offer book keeping services to small business owners, you may like to begin with LinkedIn. However if you are an artist selling acrylic paintings, you would be better off with a combination of Instagram and Facebook.

Keep the business logo as your profile image.You may add the website url under the logo and create a composite profile picture like that. Even if you don't have a logo pick a single picture that resonates with what you are offering. It's a good practice to keep the same image as your profile photo across different social media websites for easy identification. 

Ensure that you fill in all the details for the profile with your contact information as well as website url. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Some people add a phone number to every single post that they put up. This saves time for the customer when they like something for sale and want to buy it.

Keep a few posts up your sleeve. There will be days that you are bursting with creativity and others when you feel like a dried well. On a good day create a few posts and save them to be published later on your social media accounts. Most of the social media sites offer a scheduled post option. Make good use of those.

If they don't have one directly on the website, there are third party sites that you can schedule your posts on like Social Oomph or HootSuite. I have used both and found them easy to handle. There are a number of alternatives such as Sendible, SocialPilot, AgoraPulse, SproutSocial and more. Look for the free version which may have limited features, but is a good bet when you are just starting out with your business. You can always upgrade to a paid plan later on.

Nothing engaged people more than a contest where they may actually win something tangible. You can run a ten day social media challenge which engages your readers and has them bringing in more eyeballs to your posts. Look at posts offered by your competition for ideas that would work in your niche.