Maintaining a productive relationship with your customers further entices them to continue doing business with you. It may also lead to a growth in your customer base as your current clients are more likely to recommend your product or service to others if their positive perception of your brand is consistently, but not annoyingly, reinforced through your communications with them. In this article, we are going to provide you with some helpful tips on how to take a proactive approach toward boosting customer engagement while building on positive brand sentiment via social media.
The Power of Social Media
Over the past decade, a well-orchestrated social media presence has become a necessary aspect of almost any thriving business. The various social media platforms give your business the opportunity to communicate with segments of your target market that were impossible to reach in the past. Depending on your industry, it may make more sense to focus your efforts on the one or two social media platforms containing the largest portion of your target market; this helps ensure you won’t spread yourself too thin. For example, it is better to have an established, professional presence on a social media platform like Facebook as opposed to having a subpar, ineffective presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Learn More: Maximizing Your Social Media Marketing Efforts
Get Involved in the Conversation
There are several different actions that go into positively engaging your customers via social media. The first is fairly obvious: promptly and professionally responding to the people contacting you directly on your social media page. However obvious this seems, there are a significant number of businesses that don’t do this. When you neglect these communications, you are not only missing out on potential new business, but you are also increasing the risk of developing negative brand perception throughout the social media community. This is especially true if a person you ignored happens to have a large following.
Aside from responding to the messages sent directly to your social media page, you should also actively engage your following by consistently posting relevant, shareworthy content. A good rule of thumb is that for every 1 post promoting your product or service, there should be 3 to 4 posts that provide interesting information or industry news that appeals to your target market. Also, be sure to respond to the people commenting on your posts, prompting them to further engage with your brand.
Brand Monitoring
Many of the conversations relating to your business do not happen on your social media pages. In fact, there is a good chance that most of these communications are happening elsewhere. This may include industry-related Facebook groups and pages, competitor pages, or individual profiles on the various social media platforms. Most social media platforms enable you to search for keywords pertaining to your business so you can locate these posts. For an in-depth analysis, there are a variety of brand monitoring tools that notify you when your brand is mentioned while providing other beneficial features to help you analyze and respond to posts worthy of your attention.
