As you’ve probably come to realize, social media is here to stay. The more mobile and digitized our world becomes, the more social media channels will arrive and evolve to match our needs. With over 2 billion people using social media worldwide, your business cannot afford to miss out on social media. But you wonder, how? Like any other business decision, a strategy is key.
Let’s look at how to build a great social strategy for your business.
Connect to Customer
Social media is much more than posting cool pictures or offers for the marketplace to see. It has become a place to lend insight into the operations of your business. It’s not uncommon for business’s to post pictures celebrating employees and clients as a well as showing off the culture of your business. In other words, social media allows you to humanize your business for customers to see. And who doesn’t like knowing that their favorite brands are run by real human beings? By developing your message – a set of targeted messages – that you believe will resonate with customers, you have created your online persona.
See Beyond Sales
While many businesses focus on sales through their social presence, these channels provide your business an opportunity for virtual customer service and relationship management. It seems more-and-more these days that people are taking to social media to complain about their experience with brands. Think about that long line at the rental car counter or your missing luggage from your last flight. Well, guess what, most of those businesses have people sitting at a desk responding to those complaints to resolve their customer’s issues. By humanizing the experience, businesses are seeing greater retention of customers despite the initial breakdown.
Increase business opportunities
There are millions of messages being sent on social channels every day. No doubt some of that conversation is happening around your brand. People who are mentioning your brand are quality leads because they know/like your brand enough to mention them on their social channels. This provides you an opportunity to engage with them and foster a relationship that could eventually create a brand advocate. By engaging your customers, you are again showing them they are important to your brand. However, if they are being ignored, they’ll eventually look to replace your brand with one that shows it cares.
There are many elements to a good social media strategy. Like with any other marketing effort, the customer should be at the forefront. By maintaining this perspective, your content will be reflective of the value you put on your audience.
Looking for more social media tips, join us for our next Social Media Bootcamp.