Get Off Your Soapbox!

You've got your social media accounts set up, you have a handful of followers, and you are posting tweets and status updates several times a week. When you blog, you kick that out to your social media too. That's not a bad start for social media, but it's far from the point of using Facebook and Twitter, especially if you want to be the most outstanding MSP in your service area.

Forward Thrusters... Engage!

Your Facebook and Twitter accounts aren't meant to just be bulletin boards. Put the social back in social media and use it as a way to communicate with your prospects and clients. It's much easier to engage people by turning your social media engagements into dialogue instead of a monologue. Ask questions, get opinions, and be social! Don't merely say how great the new version of Android is, ask your followers if they received their update yet or what version they are on. Get THEM talking, and make them more comfortable interacting with you on a regular basis.

There are two reasons for this. First, it builds relationships. Interactions are always more powerful than the typical post, because not only did the user read it, they invested in a few seconds to talk to you. Keep the dialogue going, thank them for responding, get excited that they gave you their time, because it is huge, especially at first.

Secondly, if you haven't noticed, Facebook and Twitter are getting crowded. There is a lot going on. Facebook combats this by running complex algorithms that decide what content to generate for you based on what you like, what your friends like, and how much you interact with a particular page. If users interact with you, they will have a better chance of seeing you more often.

Everybody Knows that the (Twitter) Bird is the Word

It's not just about what you say - it's what your clients say. It's what your prospects are asking. Twitter makes it easy to find out what's happening in real time. Twitter's real-time search capabilities have always been outstanding, but lately Twitter has been improving them even more. Beyond that, you can use tools like Hootsuite to monitor certain keywords, like your competitors, prospects, your local area, and more. You might get lucky and find a new prospect to intercept.

There are countless tools available for Twitter, including GeoChirp.com, which lets you search for keywords mentioned in a specific radius, in real time. You might find someone ranting about how their exchange server is slow, or how their current computer guy just isn't cutting the mustard.

It's big brother-ish, but if you swoop in with a friendly helping hand, you'll be more of a heroic Clark Kent than a sneaky Lex Luthor.

Getting off your soap box is vital, especially on Twitter. Public replies, retweets, and direct messages need to all be employed during your regular social media usage, or else you won't enchant your followers.

In other words, if you spend just enough time to compose some good tweets every day or two, you are missing a major piece of the social media puzzle.

When you Have No Traction At All

If your followers are in the single digits and you don't know how to start, the best thing you can do while remaining in your chair is to check out associations like your Chamber of Commerce. Usually localized associations like this jumped on the bandwagon a while ago and usually have a pretty good follower base. On Twitter, you can go to anybody's account and see who they are following and who is following them. While it's not best practice to just go and add everybody in a list blindly, you can scope out businesses and people in your community that you know and send them a request, and follow businesses that you might be a best fit for. Just remember that it's supposed to be a relationship - you'll want to interact with them and be providing good information that they will find valuable.  Beyond that, tell your clients, partners, friends, employees, and everybody that you interact with on a regular basis that you have some great information hitting your social networks, and let them know they should Like and Follow you!