Your tips for using social media to generate business

Social media is an unavoidable part of small business strategy these days. Love it or loathe it, interacting with customers online is here to stay. However building up a brand's social media presence can be tricky territory - turning Facebook 'likes' and Twitter RTs into profits is not as easy as you may think.

There is help out there for the uninitiated, including O2's Social Insights, an online tool that allows you to measure your social media performance against that of other SMEs. Businesses that sign up are also given a kick-start with £50 of credit to spend on Twitter's small business advertising platform.

We asked our readers for their advice on using social media for business success - from finding content for blogs to helping your followers solve their business problems, here's what they recommended.

@GdnSmallBiz social media is invaluable to informing about new products & services, keeping contact with existing customers, media links etc
— BOUND (@boundbyhand) August 8, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz social media is for building relationships - reach new customers and keep in touch with old ones. Just keep talking. #SMEtips
— O2 Business UK (@o2businessuk) August 19, 2014

Business owners stressed that social media should be about building up relationships

@GdnSmallBiz Direct engagement, interaction & showing intrest in other people - all 2 way thing. Even virtual biz is built on relationships
— Heidi @ Minx Media (@MinxMediaUK) August 8, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz Engage with them, have a conversation that has relevant insight. Always a good starting point!
— Avenue To Sales (@avenuetosales) August 8, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz by building relationships like in real life! It takes effort, no quick results.
— Brett_DPOM (@BrettDixon) August 8, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz re #SMEtips be useful. No magic bullet. Think about what target audience needs to know. Engage & help.
— Greg Simpson (@press4attention) August 8, 2014

One way to build your brand on social media is by engaging in relevant content

@GdnSmallBiz #SMEtips Use social networks to help people solve their business problems and point to useful content you've written.
— Pete Clark (@ClarkCX) August 8, 2014

@gdnsmallbiz I keep track of online discussions to get ideas for blogs. I point to these posts when talking to potential clients.
— Pete Clark (@ClarkCX) August 8, 2014

@gdnsmallbiz People respond very positively to upfront info and my conversion rate for new business leads is about 80%.
— Pete Clark (@ClarkCX) August 8, 2014

Some entrepreneurs recommend using social media as a first port of call, before following up in person

@GdnSmallBiz -if believe could be a biz opp, ask 2 meet other to discuss or dm & ask whether going to event in sector @SMETips
— Joe Dilger (@Dilger1Joe) August 8, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz -I find twitter v useful here, & have got business from 'follow ups' after Education events & meeting other tweeters.
— Joe Dilger (@Dilger1Joe) August 8, 2014

Creating content that people want to share can act as a testimonial for your business

@GdnSmallBiz it's great when clients share pictures - in use / just received - seeing products in use is v engaging, a kind of testimonial
— BOUND (@boundbyhand) August 8, 2014

Different social media channels work better for certain types of businesses - is LinkedIn best for you, or should you stick with Pinterest?

@GdnSmallBiz Definitely Twitter, you can reach so many people compared to the other channels but it depends on your business (obj)
— VoteHere.com (@votehere) August 14, 2014

@GdnSmallBiz We find Twitter works best for b2b communication, Facebook for b2c, and don't use the others #SMEtips
— PNE Enterprise (@pne_enterprise) August 14, 2014

@gdnsmallbiz Ours is quite corporate focused (as in clients) so we use twitter and Linkedin. Google+ helps search rankings massively tho...
— TheSalesWay (@TheSalesWay) August 14, 2014