Companies who hadn’t embraced the internet were left behind a long time ago – at the very least, a company website is now a must.
Now, it’s likely those who aren’t using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are going to follow the relics who refuse to move with the times.
Social media is a wonderful thing for business of all sizes, and has given companies and marketing teams the opportunity to interact with their customers like never before. In fact, as much as two years ago the Business Insider was giving its opinions on how companies should be using social media as a priority over traditional marketing techniques. This has become even more important as we enter 2014.
Unfortunately, too many businesses are told that they need to be using social media, but don’t really have any idea how to do so effectively. This often results in dead, unused or uninspiring social profiles which have little evidence of proper engagement with a brand’s following. There’s no arguing against the fact that this is a massively wasted opportunity.
So what can you do to increase your customer interaction on social media?
Become personal
By getting yourself on Twitter or Facebook, you have the potential to turn a faceless, uncharacteristic company into one which has a warm, friendly and approachable personality. Spend any amount of time on Twitter and you will see great examples of interaction with people – whether it be general chat about products, dealing with and resolving complaints, or promoting good feedback that they have received.
A recent great example of this was between Asda and a spoof James Milner account (which has over 170,000 followers) – the interaction between the company and the ‘footballer’ would have been seen by all these people – not to mention by many more seeing the retweets their good humour received!
Carry out studies for incentives
Another way of getting people to interact with you on social media is by carrying out somemarket research. By doing this, you can gather people’s perceptions of your brand and offering, discover where in the marketplace you are positioned in relation to your competitors, and find out how effective your branding and company messaging may be, amongst many other things. This information can be invaluable when it comes to your continued business growth. There are a number of specialist market research agencies in the UK who can help understand and define what excites consumers, and it is well worth looking into one if this is the route you want to take.
Of course, just asking people to participate in surveys for your benefit may be too big an ask, so adding some kind of incentive can work wonders here – such as the chance to win an iPad for a randomly chosen entrant. The market research you carry out can be used to benefit you by the feedback it generates, whilst customers will feel happy by interacting with you knowing they have a chance of winning something of value.
Monitor mentions
With social media monitoring tools and services now readily available, you have the opportunity to essentially ‘listen in’ on what is being said about your company through the various platforms. You can see whether people are complaining about your service in their droves – in which case you can intercept to try and offer a helping hand – they may just change their perception about you. Remember – more people complain about bad service than share good experiences, so it’s in your interest to try and limit this type of feedback in the public domain.
Do you have any social media tips for business? We’d love to hear from you and hear about your experiences and advice.