As a company you should want to know what your customers are saying about you on your social media platforms. Is it good? Is it bad? Or are they just not that into you? But how can you do that you ask. Social media now provides us with a great way to “listen” to what consumers are saying.
Essentially your brand manager (the person in charge of your social media marketing, advertising, etc.) uses your social media outlets to monitor and sift through shared content and engage with the people who are talking about your company or specific keywords that relate to your company, products or services. In a recent study, 58% of customers want companies to respond to a complaint on social media and an even more staggering statistic, 42% expect companies to respond to positive comments.
Just imagine how cool a customer would feel if they post something like, “Only have 45 minutes for lunch today, what should I get?”, on Facebook and you being a local business can reply something like, “We can have your lunch ready for you ASAP, what would you like to order?” and BAM! you probably just got a customer for life because you were able to address their exact need at the exact moment they needed it. Talk about being at the right place, at the right moment!
But social media monitoring is still a relatively new marketing strategy and because of this we must be careful on how we approach it. So if you are seriously considering it, keep this advice in mind:
Fully understand what your customer is saying before you respond.
There is nothing worse then assuming something. So be sure you get the gist of what they want from you, then take action.
Consider the context of the post.
Is it positive, negative or just a shout out? Figure it out and respond accordingly.
Don’t engage just because you can, make sure it benefits your consumer.
Make sure you are giving some type of benefit to your consumer if you choose to engage with them that will make them more open to hearing from you again.
Build a relationship.
The whole purpose of this is to begin to lay a foundation for a long-term relationship with this person. So lay down the building blocks by giving them information they are seeking.
Of course, such a great forward thinking marketing strategy will require someone to manage the effort full-time, and actively engage with people (which is one of the cool things about this type of advertising, is that you get a REAL person communicating with you). Also, you need to make sure that the person who is reaching out on behalf of your business is really knowledgeable about your services and truly understands and encompasses what your company/brand is all about, in addition to having above average social media knowledge.
And of course, if you don’t have the staff, experience or knowledge to deal with a social media monitoring campaign, Amplify has a great staff of knowledgeable social media marketing gurus to help you get started.
In addition to social media monitoring we can help you implement a long-term, fully integrated social media marketing and advertising strategy and build interactive campaigns that can encompass everything from Facebook promotions, contest, sweepstakes, increasing your ‘Likes’ and followers across all your platform to online reputations management but those are topics for another day.