Without a doubt!

One of my businesses only gets traffic and customers from social media. We can get over 1,000 customers per month from social media without having to try too hard. That is the beauty of social media. Once you find the right platform for your product and identified your target market you only need to make one post/update and customers start coming in.

The down side is the management of messages. Using the built in messaging systems isn't ideal. However there are platforms available that make is more business friendly and allow you to view multiple social media sites from one portal. At it isn't too hard to build a system yourself.

The best thing I believe you can do is identify your target market, find where they are socializing and then simply reach out to them. Work on your brand name, make it strong enough so when people think of products (like yours) your name comes up. It took us about 6 months of hard work to get that recognition however it paid off. And when I say hard work I don't mean marketing. I mean actual work, calling, helping and going above and beyond for customers.

Take care of your customers and ensure they are happy, word of mouth can travel far. However go above and beyond and all you have to do is make a post and you are flooded with customers. Believe it or not one of the best marketing moves I made with social media was making a mistake with a customer and them complaining about it on the social media page.

Instead of feeding them the usual BS you see companies do on social media all the time we not only corrected the issue we made a bigger deal out of it. We knew everyone was watching so why try and hide it.

We ended up paying for accommodation for the customer so they could take advantage of our services sooner rather than later. This resulted in many people sharing what we did with others and allowed us to see where more potential customers socialize.

So when it comes to social media I say go for it. Just make sure you can handle complaints quickly. As your page/group will quickly turn into a public forum for people to complain about you. Resolve issues quickly and just as publicly.

If a customer is willing to post a complaint so all can see you must resolve that complaint so all can see. Doesn't mean you have to breach privacy, it does mean you have to ensure no damage is done by that person making the complaint. If they say you never shipped the item and you did. Post the dates the item was shipped and mention the item has tracking (if it does). Be very clear about the solution without breaching privacy. If it was your mistake then own up and resolve it instantly.

I know first hand social media can make you money and very quickly. If your smart about it you will get clients within an hour. But you can lose them all within minutes or a bad complaint or trying to solve the complaint in the background.

Greetings Lina and Brad from rural Australia,

I'm gobsmacked by your response, Brad Lyons.

And green with envy.

1,000 customers a month from social media.

That is amazing.

I've looked at your profile, Brad. You're a consultant. And strategist.

These are one-on-one businesses.

How do you manage 1,000 new customers a month?

What exactly do you offer on social media that allows you to be flooded with customers for these businesses within an hour of putting up a post?

And why would a good offer be subject to complaints, as you discuss in this post?

What portals/social media platforms do you use?

Have you packaged your success into a step by step course yet? So many people just don't cut it with social media. I'm sure there's a ready and willing audience prepared to pay for what you know.

I'm impressed by your success, Brad. Not many people would be in your league.

Best wishes,

~Carol Jones, Ironing Diva❤

Purveyor of The Fitz Like A Glove™ Ironing Board Cover And Other Goodies

350,000 customers. In 29 countries.

Hi Lina, I'm not sure whether you're asking this as a general question or as a specific one. I have invested a lot of time building up a strong Linkedin profile over the last 5 years, and have over 3000 followers. I measure all my marketing as a consultant and can nominate specific work that has come through this channel. I would say I've probably broken even if I counted all the time I invested in blogging, content, networking and so forth.

If we take this as a more general question, I'd phrase it this way. If it isn't contributing to your bottom line, then you shouldn't be doing it.

Bottom Line is a complex 'metric' since you're taking overall sales minus overall costs, so you'd have to be doing to fancy 'assignment of costs to put a component of your book keeper, accountant, office, furniture, phone and internet and insurance towards social media but if we take it as a simple metric - are you getting more business from it than what it costs you, I would hazard a guess a really big percentage of business wouldn't know the answer.

They operate social media like active sonar - banging out with their sound but not listening to the answers.

As a strategist, my recommendation to any business owner is simple. Pilot your communication channel (eg facebook) and set up a method of measuring the outputs and outcomes you get from it. An outcome being a paid customer/lead whereas an output would be visitors, likes and so forth.

If over a period of time, this metric remains positive - awesome. If not, then maybe you're implementing it wrong, or you need a different channel to communicate with prospective clients.