What business owner doesn’t want to make his or her customers happier? Happy customers equal more business and referrals for you. There’s nothing better than positive word of mouth advertising, because it’s totally free. What if you could help your chances of making sure your customers were satisfied with your product or services?

Social media and local SEO can help business owners connect with their customers to make sure their needs are being met and they’re happy with the interactions they’ve had with the business. Not sure how social media and local SEO can help? Here are 5 ways.

1. Attract new customers. Using local SEO techniques and social media can help you attract new customers. Creating a Google Place page for your business and optimizing it for search engines can help your business appear in the letters of the Google Maps results where potential customers are most likely to see you. Adding enhancements to your page like photos, videos, a full business description, coupons and more will help attract customers to your page and away from your competitors. Making sure your business is listed on review sites like Yelp, Merchant Circle and more can also help attract new customers to your business. Potential customers will read your positive reviews and choose to work with you. Customers can also leave reviews on Facebook. Twitter tweets are now indexed in Google. This means if you use keywords in your tweets, when people search for your products or services, your tweets may show up in the results and entice them to check out your business.

2. Brand recognition. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube get more exposure for your business. The more exposure your business gets, the more recognizable your brand becomes. Soon, when the time comes for your consumers to choose between you and your competitors, they will choose you, simply because they remember your company was the one with the funny video on YouTube that they enjoyed. Local SEO helps consumers find your social network pages, photos and videos. Optimizing your page or videos with the right keywords can help them show up in the search results above your competitors. This will help guarantee potential customers do business with you rather than your top competitors.

3. Customer loyalty. Social networks allow for businesses to connect with their customers on a more relaxed, personal level. When a customer actually likes a business or feels attached to it in some way, customer loyalty is created. Making your social media network a place where your target audience feels comfortable and entertained will make them more apt to do business with you over your competition. Posting entertaining or interesting search-optimized information on your Facebook, Twitter or YouTube pages will increase the chance of your followers sharing the information with their friends; which means more business for you.

4. Customer satisfaction. Social media networks let your company interact directly with your customers. Customers can post questions, concerns, praise or even complaints on your social media pages. While complaints are not something you want on your pages, they bring dissatisfied customers to your attention so you can fix the problem. Never underestimate the power of one disgruntled customer. It’s much better to get the problem taken care of than to wait and see what kind of damage they can do. Keep in mind that you have full control over what shows up on your pages. You have the power to remove any unwanted posts that may appear and you can choose to be notified by email whenever someone leaves comment. Social media networks also allow for you to post questions or polls for your customers to answer. Want to know what they thought of your newest product? Ask them on Facebook. Getting their feedback will help you better serve them, which will increase customer satisfaction and positive word of mouth.

The power of social media combined with local search can help your business in many ways. Whether you need to attract new customers or keep your currently customers happy, these techniques can help you grow your business and increase your profit.