Expanding your reach

If you have a product that is consumer focussed and you want to widen your appeal, then using social media such as Twitter or Facebook to get your products in front of more people is a great way to do this.

But how do you get people to 'Like' your page, or '#follow' you on Twitter?

The trick is to make the information/post interesting, either from a human interest point of view, or an amusing photograph, but perhaps by far the best way is a competition.

In return for a 'Like' or a '#follow', you can put the email address of the user into a modern day hat, an excel spreadsheet for instance, and each time the competition date is drawing to a close, pick a winner for your competition.

Design your competition post carefully, make sure you have a good photo and keep text down to a minimum. You will need some 'Like's' to start with for this to work and you will need to be persistent. But if you ask all your employees/friends/suppliers to 'Like' and '#follow' you, you will have a good pool in which to start the ball rolling.

William Withers