Social media is for selfies & cats, not serious stuff like work!
Selfie! Look at what my pussy cat’s doing! My dinner! @!%*@!!*#!!! Is that it for social media, hugely powerful platforms just used to make whoopee? There’s more, much more. Social media allows you to talk with your customers, promote your products, build relationships, and humanise your brand. Your competitors are, why aren’t you?
Social media – a platform for sales, support & marketing
Your competitors are all over it like a rash. Your existing and future customers are chatting online, swapping reviews, choosing suppliers, and making purchases.
Where are you?
Social media has overtaken email as the most efficient way to engage with your audience. It increases brand recognition and traffic, boosts conversion rates and reduces churn. It’s immediate and it allows you to have a human voice talking in real time.
Whatever your company policy, your team are all tweeting, sharing, commenting, and watching WWE. Get them involved and ask them to share your posts. Each team member has followers that will increase your audience further. It’s called teamwork and it’s supposed to work both ways.
Blog posts
Your audience are going to love your latest blog post. It’s relevant, educational, and well written with a touch of humour. Publish and wait… and wait…
Sad to say, we’re not mind readers and you’ll need to let us know it’s there. If you want to increase the exposure of your blog content – share it. Doing this via social media is quick and free. Social media platforms do offer promotion of your post, but at a cost. Remember to always include an image, a comment or question to spark interest, and a link to the post (easy to forget).
Tailor your post, comment and image to the platform you’re using. Twitter is more immediate and snappy, LinkedIn wears a suit.
It’s all about engagement; comments are what you’re after. You have to respond to each one individually, and if possible, within the hour.
Humanise your customer support
You’ve a ticketing system and a support phone line, and your response is quick and efficient. But when a customer is losing patience, they want an answer NOW. Waiting in a phone queue or raising a ticket is not going to improve their mood. If they post their grievance on your public social media feed, they know it’ll get your attention. Yep, that’s the negative side, but if your goal is to build a relationship with your audience, you can’t afford to hide.
“Turning a negative into a positive”, vomit-inducing psychobabble, soz. Be polite and calm, solve the issue as fast as you can. You not only appease the customer, you also show other users how efficient and professional you are.
Train your team on social, watch your feeds, route queries to the right team. Never automate responses, users appreciate a brand that listens and responds personally.
Get to know your audience
Social media platforms provide tools for analytics. They will help you get to know your audience; language, gender, age, and location. You can also see what they’re commenting on, liking, and sharing. The results will help you create targeted campaigns that are appropriate to your audience.
Customer feedback
Your company has launched a new product. You know it’s great but what do your customers think? Introduce it on social media and ask for opinions of users. The feedback you get will be more valuable than any in house testing or faux user testing.
Watch your competitors
If you’re not using social media, you’ve gotta catch up because your competitors are already there. You’re late, no bother, watch and learn from their successes and their failures.
Website page ranking
Google does/doesn’t use social media to rank your website. Or does it?
- In 2010 Google said social signals were taken into consideration when ranking websites.
- In 2013 it said that social signals do not play a part in search page ranking.
Let’s assume they do and then you can’t go wrong.
If you’re active on social media Google can see what users think of your company. Get to know your personality and check out your reputation.
Every time you post an article, include a link to your website. Where relevant, link to other blog posts you’ve published. You’ll boost your website traffic and build on your link strategy.
It all leads to better ranking, regardless of what stance Google’s taking.
Bite the bullet – start using social media
Stop making excuses and get yourself out there. Your customers are talking on social media and your competitors are listening. Where are you?
