Its goes without saying that social media is a great tool no matter what industry your in, admittedly some are more social media friendly than others but nether the less there is a little piece of social media to suit every kind of company.

However, if your a new company that is still establishing itself, how are you going to build any kind of following & build awareness for the brand? No one is going to search for you so how are you going to get people to “Fan” you?

Here is a quick example of how I used Facebook to build awareness for a new brand in a niche market at ZERO cost, zilch, nada. Enjoy

Hooked on Horses is a new equestrian magazine & website bringing everything Horse to its readers in Essex. Over the last few months since launching there has been a steady income of fans to the page who have discovered the magazine through Facebook or know about the brand through its magazine or website.

Before starting the activity, there were just over 400 fans and around 1000 friends (not bad going, but of course there is a considerable amount of room to grow)

Simply using the best of Facebook’s social features awareness was built across the target audience in order to increase the number of friends, fans and followers.Nothing ground breaking, nothing spectacular, just using the best of Facebook’s social tools to outreach & engage.

1. Setup a group or page that is of common interest to your target audience, in this case a group for all horse riders in Essex

2. Invite all your friends to join and ask them to invite their friends, with the aim of seeing how many horse riders there really are in Essex

3. Now you have a good following, you can start to engage with the audience through this group and post interesting but relevant news articles – this can be your own content or content from other people.

4. Add content and multimedia, share photos, start discussions. Really engage with the user and give them content they wish to know about, watch or read.

5. As people become aware of your brand, they start to follow and befriend you.

6. Before you know it, your friends and fan numbers have increased & people become more aware of the brand

7. You can then see through the analytic’s how many have then go on to visit the website & become more engaged with the magazine. Starting on Saturday evening with the web traffic dramatically increasing as Hooked on Horses engage with more of the audience across Facebook

So there you have it, like i say, nothing ground breaking or innovative. A simple way to communicate and engage with your target audience.