Most social media campaigns are focused on the amount of friends, fans or followers; however, oftentimes we forget that we need to increase the engagement levels of our friends, fans and followers. Surveys, contests, and promotions are all great ways to build your follower count and increase your engagement. Following are tips and ideas I have seen effective for small businesses:
Offer a “buy one-get one free” promo to the first 5 people who answer a question about your company or your product on Twitter correctly. This will prompt people to send you tweets while they learn more about your company, product or service.
Offer a gift card to your store to a randomly picked Facebook Fan every month. This builds your fan base and keeps them coming back every month.



June 30th, 2010
Maria Helm
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If the people already know you, buy from you and trust you, you can ask them to do things like sign up for a managed or retained service, or perhaps buy additional or upgraded products. That same request on a cold list (or list of people who don’t know you) is very difficult and in most times will not work. You’ll need to use email to drive them to a website to sign up for a free “something”, download a free report, sign up for a seminar, or some other ‘baby step’ action that will lead toward making the sale.
More and more small business owners are finding ways to cut costs. However, there are areas in your business that you can’t afford not to spend money on such as Marketing. There are ways to get the word out about your business that won’t cost you an arm and a leg. If you have a tiny marketing budget, you can try the following examples. I’m pretty sure there are other entrepreneurs that may find a few marketing ideas to try as well.
Marketing your products and services is a constant, ongoing process that is a never-ending job. Especially if you’re looking to generate revenue and increase your customer base and of course, hold on to your current customers. The good news is you don’t need much to market your small business successfully. Here are some tips of low-cost marketing tactics you can apply to your marketing plan today!


