6 Tips for Improved Social Media Customer Interaction
March 1, 2019
In the modern digital marketplace one thing that hasn’t changed is that the “customer comes first”, or at least their engagement does. The way your customer interacts with you changes how your company is ranked on Google, who sees you on social media, and your overall site conversion.
One issue many businesses face is how to get customers to take notice and get involved. Social media has helped encourage participation, but without the right content or customer cues, it can still be a lost cause. So, what can you do to help your customers wake up and take notice of your brand? Here are 6 tips for improved customer engagement through your social media channels.
1. Make Your Social Media Known: One of the issues detracting from social media contact with consumers could be their lack of knowledge. Not every business has a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, so if yours does, let your customers know. Link your social media through your main website, and don’t forget to talk about it from time to time in blogs or videos posted on your site.
The more consumers who see and hear about how to contact your business, the more likely it is that your brand will grow. You can also link your customers to alternative platforms through existing ones. For example, let your Facebook followers know you’re on LinkedIn or Pinterest, this will help grow your numbers and encourage feedback.
2. Consider Automating Your Customer Messaging Systems: An excellent tool to use on social media is an automated chatbot. You can’t always be at your computer night and day, but a chatbot can be on call while you’re away. Preprogrammed bots answer FAQs and other minimal issues while you’re AFK. Not only does it provide instant interaction for your consumers, but it covers all the information you would have repeated time and again.
Automated systems shouldn’t be your first or only point of contact, but rather, be used as a backup. You don’t want your customers to think you don’t care enough to converse in person, but you also don’t want them to feel slighted if your reply takes too long to come through. Bots are the perfect solution.
3. Improve Overall Popularity of Your Social Media Pages: Membership benefits are a great way to get customers to sign up for newsletters and the like. You can use this strategy to increase customer interaction on social media as well, by making “social sign-up” a possibility. Rather than creating a brand-new user name and password which will need to be stored and remembered, site users can sign-up with their social media accounts.
Simply logging in through Facebook or Twitter would then give customers access to the membership benefits without the need for a new login identity. It also gives new customers the push they need to take notice of you on social media.
4. Add Share Buttons for Easier Link Distribution: The more your content is shared online, the more likely it is that you’ll see feedback. Of course, if getting shares was so easy, everybody would be a social media superstar. To make your social media easier to distribute throughout the online world, add share buttons to all your content.
A share button is a small thing, but it makes a big difference in terms of who sees your blogs, videos, photos, and more. It sits above or below your content, and social media subscribers can use it to share information directly from your website or any other website they see your content posted to.
5. Make Sure Comments are Enabled: All the social media help in the world isn’t going to help you get customer interaction if they aren’t able to comment. Spam is a huge deterrent to many businesses online. Bots and trolls lurk on the internet and pray on open posts where they can comment and harass. This makes it easy for some companies to forget all about comments and leave them off altogether.
Enabling comments is a simple way to ensure that your posts aren’t just being read but are being responded to accurately. Content which blocks comments has the possibility of coming off as condescending or like it’s hiding something. Opening this aspect of your post up to readers not only appears more friendly and transparent but gives them the ability to chat candidly with a company they’re buying from.
6. Be Uniform in Your Replies: While interacting with customers on social media it’s crucial to stay uniform in your replies. This doesn’t mean each reply can’t be worded differently or have its own character. It means that having a code of conduct by which you refer to during interaction will improve the dynamic between you and consumers. Equality is as important in business as it is in any other aspect of life. Your customers want to know that they’re each valued no matter their socioeconomic standing, or any other factor that might change the way you view them as a business.
Customer engagement is crucial no matter who’s looking at it; whether Google is using engagement levels to determine your level of importance within your niche, or a new potential customer is using it to see how you treat current customers. Interactions through social media say a lot about you as a brand. It lets people know you’re willing to take initiative, own up to mistakes, and celebrate successes. It shows you care.