Social Networking for small businesses

Everyone is aware that most, if not all major business now have one or more social media account/s on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + etc. If you haven't liked a business page it's likely you have seen your friends newsfeed posts sharing numerous competitions or giveaways run by companies thus expanding that business's reach to you.

Unfortunately for a lot of small businesses or WAHM's, (work at home mums) you might discover that your little page does not have such a massive preexisting following or brand awareness that businesses such as McDonalds, Holden, Woolworths, Jay Jays, etc has so you can't rely on customers navigating to your page organically. Yet you may not also have the revenue or income to rely on expensive giveaways to promote followers to your page (or even afford the cost of the third party apps built to support these giveaways legally as per the FB t's & c's.)

So how DO you built brand recognition or awareness of your small business?

REMEMBER that your medium is a social networking tool, designed to connect friends, but also consider that you can and should connect to other businesses, for example other local businesses you frequent or have a customer relationship with. (The local tradie, your fave coffee shop, your accountant etc)
Building this network can help build a support network between businesses, with cross promotion of pages to 'share' in customer fan base. If a liker is dedicated to a business, for example a computer repair business they may follow their advice on the best coffee shop to visit whilst waiting on a repair or car service and that coffee shop could be yours!

Another major success that has been seen recently is smaller business each contributing a small amount towards a major prize. This is particularly evident in the handmade or work at home mum businesses. Typically these pages are for a hobby purposes or to supplement their income whilst at home however they do not have the financial capabilities to outlay funds to giveaway iPads or coffee machines or holidays from their own pocket. So instead, these businesses are teaming together, generating interest through raffle applications such as rafflecopter to register entries. By doing this, they are networking their customer base and sharing them with other businesses, and the trick at this point is to capture the fan base through your own page content and updates in order to convert them into purchasing customers.
Through my own personal experience as a WAHM, I participated in such an activity very shortly after opening a new page brand. In a few short weeks I increased my fan base and number of likers by around 500%. My page of 350 likers became 1400 likers after a few weeks- incentivised by an iPad prize that only cost me an outlay cost of $23. During this promotion I featured a new product to my new likers that was unique and innovative and I managed to maintain almost all of my fans following the promotions completion. (An inevitable loss as there will always be those following the comps)

Building a brand that is not handmade can be difficult and the likers will come a lot slower, however through paid advertisement and affiliation and networking with other businesses you will be much more successful in giving your brand greater reach than just hoping people will find you organically. Make and connect with friends. That's what Facebook and social media is about.
Being social.