Have you ever thought about how people perceive your company? If you work out of your home many people won’t give you the time of day. But there’s ways you can appear bigger than you really are with social media.
Secret Entourage has collected 50 ideas to make your small business seem bigger from experts in the business and marketing fields. Here’s four recommendations that take advantage of the power of social media to make a business appear larger than it actually is:
- 1. Spend time building up your social networking sites. A company with 50,000 fans will seem much larger than one with 500 even if they have the same amount of yearly revenue. – Crystal Lampe @BFTE Cosmetics.
- 2. The best way I faked it is by “investing” in an awesome demo video of my business. When you visit it’s the first thing you see and I reuse it on social media sites etc. The video was done by a well-known professional video agency that’s worked with Ashton Kutcher. It doesn’t look like I made it myself or was low-budget, so people immediately think my business is big time. (Total cost: $7K) –Andrew Woo @ProspectSnap.
- 3. There are hundreds of recruitment agencies, doing exactly the same thing that I was doing, until I realized – I could embrace social media & my firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to teach in London as a foreign teacher and use that to leverage my business. So, I wrote the ebook, Guide to Teaching in London, which won the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Ebook honorable mention award in 2011. The best part is: I wrote the book in only 7 days! Well, that ebook ended up getting me the recognition as an expert that I needed to push my business ahead. –Victoria Westcott @Classroom Canada.
- 4. In your email signature, fill it out with as much relevant contact information as possible such as social networks, fax/cell/office lines, etc. But don’t forget to also include a confidentiality notice. This will elevate the level of seriousness. Alan @intence media.
Here are some other ways people harnessed the power of social media to let potential clients know you have what it takes to play with the big guys:
Ebay says: “More and more people are using social media as their go-to source for information about businesses. User-driven platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter provide a level of transparency for customers who want to know what fellow consumers are saying about a given company’s products and services. Be careful not to make all your posts sales-oriented. Post tips, share relevant industry news or photos.”
Business Blog Hubs says: “Having a strong presence on social media is strongly associated with big businesses. Don’t spend all of your valuable time on here; just make sure you build relationships with your customers, the public, and anyone else who is relevant to what you do. This is a great, non-threatening way for potential customers to reach you. If you post unique, helpful content regularly enough, you’ll get more shares and follows all the time.”
Ryan Holmes, of HootSuite, gives this tip: Using social media to interact with your community is a cheap and effective way to appear like a larger company. With the ability to create multiple profiles, you can comment and engage with a community from different viewpoints using a similar brand alignment. If you use social media intelligently, you can easily stretch out the image of your solo project.
You’ve heard the saying “fake it until you make it” and in the world of business, image can be everything. If potential clients think you’re playing in the minor league, they will treat you like you’re not important. Here’s a quick word of warning though, don’t overdo it and make yourself look so big that you land clients that you can’t handle.