This is the third post in our new monthly series, Social Media for Landscapers, featuring tips on how you can take advantage of social media for your business.

To maximize the impact of your social media presence, create goals and a plan for reaching them. Some social media goals might include:

• Obtaining more clients
• Getting more sales
• Improving customer service

Define what you want to achieve with your social media efforts. The more specific you can be, the better. For example, your goal may be to gain 12 new customers during the next three months.

Next, plan what you’ll need to do to achieve those goals.

Gaining Prospects

Here are some ideas for goals for gaining new clients:

• Post about the services you offer and work you’ve done, so potential customers can assess whether you fit their needs.
• Consider what motivates your clients to hire you and post messages related to that.
• Reach out to your network of clients and ask them to share your page or post a review on your page.
• Offer a referral special to current customers.
• Begin asking new customers how they found out about your business, or if they’ve been to your social media sites, to track your progress.

Boosting Sales

For goals aimed at getting more sales try these tactics:

• Offer seasonal reminders and specials
• Entice customers with new services and updates
• Keep your customers engaged with your pages by regularly posting valuable information, something funny or entertaining, tips, and even community news
• Reach out and answer customer questions

Measure and Adjust

Assess your results after the first few weeks, review to see which of you posts were the most successful (shared, liked, commented on, etc.) and see if you need to adjust your tactics, including:

• How frequently you post something new
• The timing of your posts
• Type of posts (photos, videos, etc.)
• Creating more eye-catching, engaging and interesting content

Dedicated time and effort will be needed to put your plan in action, so make sure you make the time or assign it to someone else. Your efforts might be easier to achieve with paid social media advertising, which we’ll go more into detail on in a future post, as well as ideas for creating engaging and useful content.