Three simple rules for Social Media Success

In today’s day and age, Social media marketing is developing as the new age tool to target your customer base and build lasting relationships with them. It has taken marketing to a whole new level in which you can reach a large number of potential customers without much effort and cost.

Most importantly, the message is not seen as an intrusive and annoying message coming from the companies, but as valuable information coming from a trusted source. It is the key to the success of many businesses, big or small.

The three simple rules for attaining success with social media are:

1. Plan your content beforehand and be proactive with your responses:

Companies must delegate the responsibility for handling social media queries and concerns to a person or a team in order to ensure timely response and action. Queries and concerns that are not answered within a reasonable time can cause a lot of damage to the company’s reputation and customer loyalty.

They also need to own up to the problem and not be defensive against all complaints since that would not help them improve their products and services and grow as a company. All social media accounts needs to be monitored regularly to resolve queries and concerns. New content must be regularly posted and planned beforehand. This would keep customers interested and help facilitate discussions and promote the company’s product and services. It also prevents the content from becoming disorganized.

2. Involve your customers in the conversations:

Invite your customers to engage in conversation on your social media websites.This would help increase your customer base and promote your product. Moreover, people prefer to hear by word of mouth and from the real experiences of customers before they try a product. Your customers would be your greatest advocates if they have had a positive experience with your product and service and it would be beneficial for the company to involve them.

3. Guide them to the next steps and how they can help:

Always include a call to action in your posts. Maintaining an engaged audience increases your chances of gaining exposure and expanding your online reach. You can ask your audience to ‘Like a post’ or direct them to a certain page that would enable them to contribute and take action.

This would also enable you to direct the positive conversations into a Sale for the company and increase your customer base. Social Media could also be used to warn customers or inform them about recalls and taking a more proactive approach rather than deal with problems after receiving complaints from customers.

Social Media is a great marketing tool and it is very beneficial for companies to integrate it as a part of their marketing strategy. Companies need to reach their target audiences in more appealing ways in which they are willing to communicate and engage.

Would love to know what all are you doing in Social Media to communicate and engage.