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Social media marketing expert Chris Brogan was featured in a video with Entrepreneur.com a few months back in which he shared several important tips for small businesses trying to leverage social media to connect with their customers. Interestingly, most of his tips weren't about social media platforms themselves but rather about building trust and making your business accessible through the web.

If you missed the video, watch it here. And read on below for a few critical pointers on small business marketing.

1. Make it easy for people to contact you through your website. Unless your website is an e-commerce site, you probably want your visitors calling you or sending you an email to request your services. You want to turn your visitors into leads. This means either a lead capture form, a phone number, or an email address. Whatever method you use, make it stand out. Put your phone number on every page. Write a simple and compelling call to action.

The best social media campaign in the world is worthless if your website fails to convert your visitors into leads or customers. Make sure it’s easy for visitors to contact you, or your social media efforts will be wasted. This is true with SEO, too.

2. Build your email marketing list. Though not technically social media, email is still one of the most powerful ways to connect with customers. But don't spam people. The advent of social media has changed the nature of trust on the internet. If you want to build trust, you must be transparent and authentic in all that you do.

An email database is something you have to nurture. If your subscribers sense that you're sending them something to benefit yourself rather than them, they'll revolt. They'll ignore you. They'll probably even hate you. Like all things social, treating your visitors well means looking out for their needs more visibly than your own.

3. Build a media presence. If you have a website, this means you need to create fresh, relevant content on a regular basis. You may have heard that fresh content is important for search engine optimization. This is true, but content is also critical for maintaining visitor engagement. If you’re hoping to bring visitors to your website through social media, you need to be creating interesting, valuable media of some kind, like videos, articles, research findings, or blog posts. Always remember that your website is a media platform. Treat it like one, and your social campaign will flourish.