Communicating well with people is a necessary element of success in the business world. While every business has its own way of communicating, most businesses are using social media to reach out to their customers. There are several good ways that your business can connect with your clients through social media. Here are a few:
Make Social Media Important to Your Business
For most businesses, customer service is extremely important. Social media is a perfect tool for supporting best customer service practices: you can answer customer questions in real time, you can promote new goods and services, and you can provide transparency to your followers by sharing what your business is up to. If customer service is huge for your business, then you need to use social media to interact with customers.
Another big thing for social media is just listening to your customers. If you pay attention to the things that they talk about on social media you can better meet their wants and needs. Look for common trends and other important or interesting conversations that are going on between your business’ friends or followers.
Personal Communication
One good thing about using social media to communicate is that you can personalize your communication. This can be achieved by doing things like acknowledging your customers on their birthday or answering one of their questions directly. People like personal communication; they do not want to be a part of some massive message that is sent out to everyone. When your business uses social media to connect with these people and communicate with them personally, you are building trust.
Another way to communicate personally is to address any concerns with products that a customer may have. Customers often voice their opinions about their experiences at stores and the store’s products on social media. You should closely monitor your social media to address any concerns or questions from your customers.
Get Employees Involved
Try to find one or a few employees that would be good at monitoring or managing your social media and work that into their daily duties. Choose people that are active on those kinds of site already and have them manage your business’s social media profiles. Make sure to go over what is appropriate for business communication through social media, and make clear what you want your business to do in certain situations. Having an employee that is monitoring your sites will provide consistency within your business in terms of social media communication and give your business a voice your customers can identify with.
Ask Questions
One of the best ways to get feedback from your customers is to ask questions on social media. When a business asks a question about a product or a customer’s preference, they will be able to see what their customers want. These can be general or specific questions. No matter what topics you have decided to address, make sure your questions cannot be answered with just a yes or a no. You are trying to get information that you can use to improve your business, and you are trying to get to know your customers. Be ready to engage in a conversation with your followers. Let them know that you care about them. This will improve their trust in your business.
Learn from the Information
Communicating with your customers is great, but if you don’t use the information that you gain, then you are wasting your time. Take all of the valuable information and put it to use. Keep track of what customers are saying about your business, and if there is a common trend, make some changes or use it in a way that helps your business. According to Caron Beesley, you should “think of it as the equivalent of monitoring a call and using it for training purposes. Share these conversations across the organization, and act on the critique and feedback.”
The person or people monitoring your social media will be key in analyzing the information you collect and using it to enact any changes. They know what your customers want, and they should be involved in the new decisions. If you have any business meetings, make sure to have someone who monitors your social media there for their input. Essentially, they are there to give you your customer’s voice.
Do you use social media to connect with your customers? What kinds of things to you deal with most? Leave a comment in the box below.
