What you don’t know can hurt you.

I was having a conversation with a small business owner recently and we got to talking about Twitter. A question that stuck out in my head was, “How do I increase my followers?” I gave a few tips but decided to dig deeper. I quickly scanned their website…I couldn’t even tell they had a Twitter account!

You’re missing out!

If you’re hiding the links to  your social networks like a Twitter profile or a Facebook fan page, your market will not find you. Simple as that.

There are many ways you can drive traffic to your social networks from third parties like blogs to driving traffic from offline marketing. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when getting more of your online visitors to connect with you on social networks:

- Dominantly position on the website/blog. A few optimal placement for your social media networks for social media links are: top navigation bar, sidebar, footer. I would suggest placing it to a maximum of two times or it starts looking cheesy.

- Encourage your fans to share content. Leveraging tools such as the TweetMeMe button, the Facebook “Like” button, and sharing plugins like Sociable gives your fans to share your high quality content to the social network of their choice.

- Submit to Twitter directories for more visibility. Add your Twitter profile to Twitter directories like WeFollow.

- It takes time to gain traction. Don’t expect hundreds of thousands of fans racing to your Twitter page, unless you do something cool and unique (re: Old Spice). Placing your links strategically on your website, starting conversations with your fans and having sharing tools locked and loaded is a great start.

With more sharing, insightful content and great conversations online, more fans will be able to find you and connect with you online.

Do you have social media icons on your site? Do you feel it helped gain visibility?