ROR, an acronym for return on relationships, is a term that we don’t hear as often as we used to, but it’s no less relevant now as it was a few years back when major brands started to understand the potential of social media as both a marketing and a sales tool. The term was created to help businesses and retailers better understand social media and the powers it had. Now of course, almost everyone seems to understand its value and nearly every business has a social media account (or several) and know they need to do so in order to stay relevant and competitive.

It was understood that ROR would lead to ROI, return on investment.

Business owners seem to feel that their accounts need to grow overnight. This simply isn’t the case. (If it does, this may not be the audience you want.) The best results occur organically. It’s as simple as that. Your audience is hugely important to your brand — you want to be able to convert them into customers.

Think of the tortoise and the hare; slow and steady wins the race. Every time! I have seen it with my own clients and other business.

In order to grow your following I suggest taking advantage of targeted ads to help get found, but it’s also essential for business owners (or their marketing managers) to roll up their sleeves, dig in and put in some elbow grease. Take time getting to know similar and complementary businesses and, most importantly, start engaging with those who will likely utilize your own. None of this is rocket science, but it does require a certain amount of strategy.

One of the best ways to grow business digitally is indeed by engaging with those you are targeting — then taking the time to develop and nurture those relationships to convert them into customers. These relationships will eventually turn into ROI.

Social media marketing, when done properly, is a lot of work and is indeed time consuming. It requires constant upkeep and management. Maintaining current and former relationships is just as important as developing new ones, because unless you have a product or service that no one else has, you need those customers.

I can relate it best to a song my daughter learned when she was young:

Make new friends
Keep the old
One is silver
The other, gold.

In terms of business relationships, I think about this often.

For help on growth, tips on creating better content or increasing engagement give us a call and we’ll audit your social accounts to come up with a perfect plan for your business.