Having an online presence makes it easier to interact with prospective HOA clients
Key takeaways:
- Small businesses can use social media to attract clients
- A commitment to using social media is an essential part of the process
- Following a few tips makes it easier to stick with your plan
- Your online presence will attract clients if you do it right
Social media is a powerful tool that businesses of all sizes can use to their advantage. It works as a method of speaking to and interacting with potential customers and clients that you might not reach through traditional advertising.
You can also use social media to create a brand image. This image can be anything you want it to be, as it’s highly dependent on how you use the platform to present your company.
Vendors looking to provide services to HOAs can utilize social media to reach out to community managers. This method of interaction is often more efficient than phone calls and emails because it allows for conversations to develop over time. Of course, it takes a little practice to unlock the full potential of social media. Here are seven simple tips to help you get started.
1) Develop a strategy
Social media success is highly dependent on the strategy you create. What are your goals? How do you intend to reach them? Do you have a backup plan?
Unless you have a clear path to follow, your social media presence is likely to twist in the wind without achieving much. Your strategy should include an idea of who you’re looking to target and how you’ll attract them to your business. You might also develop a content creation strategy to integrate into your social media presence. Regardless of the details, having a road map helps you hit the ground running and improves your chances of finding clients.
2) Inject personality
Many social media pages fail because the author simply posts or re-posts articles without letting their personality shine through. But almost every successful social media page you come across uses humor or knowledge to attract an audience to the account.
The best way to show off your personality is to provide information on your specific industry in an entertaining way. For example, if you provide pool maintenance services, you can begin by posting tips on pool safety or funny stories about repairing clients’ pools. Letting your personality come through provides value for the audience and assures community managers that a human being is running the account rather than a bot.
3) Target the right clients
You don’t need to attract every community manager on a particular social media platform to your page. After all, some community management firms don’t use outside vendors, others will be too far away geographically, and some simply aren’t interested in your services.
While using your accounts to post general information that applies to all community managers is fine, you don’t want to waste time interacting with a firm in Houston if you live in Boston. Taking a few minutes to ensure that the people you’re interacting with are local and willing to work with contractors will save you time pursuing a client that won’t work out in the long run. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore community managers who don’t fit your profile; it simply means your time is better spent interacting with firms who have the potential to become clients.
4) Comment on posts
One of the most important things you can do when using social media is to interact with other posters. It’s a quick, free, and effective way to get noticed by potential clients.
Start by following a few local community management firms on various social media platforms. Then you can comment on these firms’ social media posts, especially if they post something relevant to your industry.
Of course, your comments might not get you immediate work. But when the community manager is looking for someone in your field, you’ll likely garner consideration if you’re consistent about commenting on relevant posts in a way that shows them you know what you’re talking about.
5) Ask community managers to follow you
It might seem counterintuitive to ask potential clients to do something for you, but most will oblige if you demonstrate that you could be of service at some point in the future. Not only is this a great way to get to know potential customers, but other firms will see that community managers already follow you, which acts as a method of social validation. Your website should also push potential clients to your social media pages because it’s easier to interact with them once they follow you there.
6) Use the available tools
You’ll likely use multiple social media platforms to cast as wide a net as possible to snag new clients. Fortunately, you can invest in some tools that make it easier to maintain multiple social media pages.
These tools allow you to post to various platforms simultaneously with a single push of a button, saving you time in the process. You can also customize and automate your posting schedule to ensure you’re consistently providing content to your followers.
7) Act like a human
It should go without saying, but acting like a human being while using your company’s social media accounts is the best way to go. Make yourself approachable by taking the time to answer questions and respond to queries. Speaking with community managers online the same way you’d reach out in person will help create a familiarity that could lead to jobs down the line.
Another way to connect
The best-known mainstream social media platforms provide excellent ways to connect with clients. However, a specialized social media platform for vendors is worth a look, too.
VendorSmart is just such a platform that connects vendors with HOA community managers. The result is a direct line of communication that leads to more work for service providers. Contact VendorSmart for more information on our vendor management platform.