Many organisations are already aware that social media can be a very powerful tool for marketing your brand, getting the word out there to customers and driving traffic to your brand’s website, blog, or e-commerce store. But, it’s also important to note that social media can actually be very damaging to your brand if the right strategies are not used, with many businesses learning the hard way that not properly utilising social media or employing the wrong people to manage social media profiles can severely damage the reputation of a brand.
So, how can your business and brand be sure to successfully leverage social media? Read on for some top social media customer engagement strategies.
Solving Customer Problems
One of the main features of your brand’s social media profiles should be answering customer questions and providing them with solutions for reasonable, brand-related problems.
Often, it’s much easier for customers to get in touch via commenting or sending a direct message on Facebook, or by tweeting a brand on Twitter, rather than making a call or sending an email. Because of this, it’s important for brands to have the right people monitoring their social media accounts and ensuring that any customer queries directed to you through this channel are resolved.
Getting Feedback
Social media can be one of the best platforms to use when it comes to gaining honest and genuine feedback from your customers, but it’s also important to bear in mind the risks that accompany using social media for this purpose.
Allowing public reviews on your company’s Facebook page, for example, can be an excellent strategy to encourage customers to share their opinions. However, by choosing to do this, you must also be hugely dedicated to customer satisfaction, as bad Facebook reviews can cause significant reputation damage.
Using other methods of getting feedback from social media, for example posting links to call centre surveys which customers can fill in after contacting your call centre for advice, can increase the amount of quality feedback that you receive and improve satisfaction by creating more inclusiveness for your customers in business decisions.
Keeping Customers Informed
Social media was designed to keep individuals constantly informed when it comes to the topics, brands, and people that they care about. So, when using social media to connect with your customers and improve customer engagement, it’s important that you make sure keeping them up to date with what’s happening with your brand is a daily priority.
Use social media to alert your customers to any problems that you’re dealing with which could affect them, promotions and special deals that they might want to take advantage of, and new products, store openings, website redesigns, and anything else that they’d like to know. This will result in more of a community spirit and help your customers really get to know your brand, improving customer loyalty and attracting good recommendations.
Takeaway
Social media has grown to become a key aspect of marketing and customer engagement for brands all over the world. But, the strategies that you use for customer engagement through social media must be chosen carefully.
