Traditional business owners would cringe to hear someone say that they run their  business with 6 people across 3 cities in 2 provinces and NO walk-in traffic. But  that is exactly what Jeff MacArthur has done with his team at MGI Media.

“We’ve gotten to a point with online infrastructure that there’s not many barriers  to doing what we do remotely.”

The need for the open office walk-in to view products and services available to the  commercial consumer has since been replaced with websites, online portfolios,  and social media testimonials. The power of the new online community, through website and social media integration, has allowed media companies to securely send their products to clients on the internet.  The day-to-day business of handshakes and board room meetings are quickly being replaced by webcams and Skype.

“These are the things that have helped us to maintain the kind of low overhead that you need to to have a small business that will grow.”

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 You’ve passed the point of mastering the basics and have established a solid presence  on Facebook and Twitter. You’ve provided promotions for your online audience, and  have listened to the comments and suggestions people have made about your business.  But without changing your business model to suit the demands of your online  consumers, how do you prove to them you are listening?

Lisa Middleton, and her team at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, have built an online  presence that is one of the strongest in the arts community in Canada. The team uses a  simple Fan of the Week promotion to show their followers how much they appreciate  their views, reviews, and photos from their Festival experience.

“We recognize them on our (Facebook) wall and in our About section for the following  week. They don’t receive anything other than just the pure recognition. We just  really want them to know that we’re reading; we’re listening to what they have to say and that we’re interested.”

Not every business, even ones with a strong online presence, will see that promotion as something that would fit for them. But there are fundamentals of what Middleton is doing that are universal:

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 Many companies incorporate a Facebook page to help boost their online presence.  Setting up a page is simple, and it’s easy for employees to promote the page by inviting  their Facebook friends to ‘like’ the page.

But after several days, weeks, and months, many pages find themselves with no new  traffic, despite a significant investment of time in populating the page with interesting  and influential content. The page itself has failed to breach the inner circle of people  originally invited to check it out.

So how do you drive traffic back to your Facebook page? Have a contest? Use an e-mail  blast? Promote it on your website more? Chris Farias, who is an imaginitarian and  partner at Kitestring, suggests that Facebook itself may be the solution.

“I like the ads where you click and they have ‘Like us on our page’, so I’ll go check it out  and see what they’re doing.”

It’s an interesting concept: using social media to drive your presence on social media.  You already know the person uses Facebook, so why not target them directly? Plus, if you have populated your page with valuable and informative content about your business, this type of ad could be what gets your content seen. In addition to that, Facebook is an affordable source of advertising when targeted and messaged properly.

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