So you made some profiles and invited your friends to “fan” your company on Facebook or “follow” your company on Twitter. Now what? Did half your friends do what you told them? Have you reached a plateau for members? What do you do now?

This is a question I come across A LOT! And although there are many ways to spam your way to more members, here is what anyone getting involved in social media marketing needs to know: Be interesting. What I mean by that is if you want people to come to your business and be involved, you have to be involved with them. You also need to keep going. This is not your normal marketing campaign. It requires you to be relevant and interesting more than once. You don’t have to talk about really mind bending ideas. You’re not writing a book. You just need to be there and be relevant. Here are a few examples of what your company should write about:

• Hire someone new? Make them feel welcome!
• Carrying a new product? make an informal introduction (without sounding salesy)
• Serving up a special dish? put in on special!
• Featuring a new beer? tap your fans for feedback!
• Having a sale? make a coupon and spread it around!
• Not sure what to do over the weekend? ask your fans!
• Like/Hate the weather? make a comment!

As you can see, It can be a casual as the weather or as immediate as a food special. The important thing is to keep trying to connect. This is about energizing and connecting with your customers, not talking at them about self serving purposes.  I find that using twitter 15 minutes per day, updating fans twice a week and sending emails once a week is about the right amount of contact to not be “spammy”, but retain that top of mind awareness. If you are producing good content, you won’t need to re-invite. But if you do, make sure you have a reason to re-invite them and don’t say because you have the coolest company on the planet. Your company is it’s coolest only in your eyes.

Practice this regularly and you will notice people gravitating to you and growing your marketing database. If you ever need inspiration, fan Threadless on Facebook. They are outstanding at keeping users engaged.

Cheers!