Raving fans for your brand make getting clients easier and cheaper. Social media didn’t exist a few years ago but now that it does, here are some ways to build some raving fans around your brand:

How do you build a community around your brand?

• Your Small Business Blog: Blogs can be highly interactive. They can join them to receive new posts via RSS feeds and can be notified of new comments.  Prolific and interesting industry blog posting can create an engaged and qualified community that grows over time.
• Your Facebook Fan Page: Facebook is be a great place for you to interact with clients and your community. By having a Facebook Fan Page, you can have people follow your business and experience your corporate story and expertise via the newer Timeline format. When Fans interact with your Fan Page, it also opens the possibility of bringing in new visitors that see their friends interacting with your page on their Timelines. This can help you nurture a continually expanding online community around your brand. The more followers, the more social proof that you are worth following.
• Twitter: People who follow you on Twitter will see short updates from you and many of those can be responded to and re-tweeted. Those activities can grow the community by pulling in other interested Twitter users who could be led to your other online communities where associations and relationships will continually strengthen.
• Google Places and Review Sites: If your business is local or regionally targeted, Google Places and other review sites can show people reviews and other information about your site. As people create their own reviews on popular online places, this helps you illustrate your expertise and helps you draw more visitors to your page.  Be sure to complete online profiles for review sites and address reviews — both good and bad.

via Build a Community Around Your Brand and Reap the Rewards.
Remember, just like how a newborn needs human connection to survive, so does your brand!
Need more chicken soup for your biz? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk!

Related articles

• 5 Ways Online Communities Drive Offline Behavior (postadvertising.com)
• Marketing Effectively with Facebook Timeline (avenuesocial.com)
• How to gain more re-tweets and increase your engagement on Twitter (publicrelationssydney.com.au)