Reaching Customers through Social Media

In our previous post, we covered the reasons why customer support is crucial for business. Now, let’s discuss some ways you can reach your existing and potential customers on the world wide web, specifically social media. Below are some ways to not only connect with your customers on social networks, but also engage with them, provide them customer service and even make money.
1. Invest in social media interaction.
Today over 95% of businesses use social networks in some capacity. Social media has become an essential tool to keep customers engaged. Consumers look to social media to provide feedback and even receive customer service. Since social networks have become the go-to place for customers to spread word of mouth about products or services, businesses should pay close attention to what’s being said about them on these websites. Not only that, businesses should have a strategy in place for instances where their reputation gets stained because of a customer comment online so they can undo the damage as it happens.

2. Use the right network for your target audience.
To reach the right audience, you need to know where to find your target audience can be found. This post by Mashable.com gives a breakdown of which social network is used by demographic. So if your business caters to youngsters, Instagram would be the way to go but if you’re trying to reach homeowners, Twitter is the choice of network for you, so on and so forth.

3. A new way to provide customer support.
Don’t think of social networks as an avenue for one-way conversations. If you know the potential of social media, you would be able to gauge how powerful it can be as a new channel for customer support. In the past, customers would have had to visit your store or phone you to get customer support. Now, they can hashtag your business and post their questions publicly. The good thing is that if you give them top-notch service on these sites, others will see it and will prefer you over your competitors. But the opposite is true as well so be wary of your interactions with clients online.

4. Incentivize following your social media pages.
Needless to say, the more followers you have on social media, the better it is for your business. So, in order to get more followers, try different methods. You can offer a discount or a free item to customers that like you on Facebook or follow you on Twitter. Once you’ve built a considerable number of followers, you can rely on referrals. In other words, after reaching a few thousand followers, rest assured that your reach growth will be exponential. Each time you have a promotion or announcement to make, you will reach more customers than before with no cost to your business.

5. Your social media reach is quantifiable.
With tools such as Google Analytics, you can actually track how many of your website visitors originate from your Facebook page, etc. If you have an e-commerce website, your social network efforts can result in instant revenue for your business. Each of the major social networks provide an analytics tool for free. On Facebook for instance, you can see how many people each of your posts reached, how many likes you’ve had per month, etc. The stats provided by these tools can get quite in depth. For instance, bounce rates indicate the number of website visitors that clicked on your website link but didn’t go any further than your homepage.

6. Be engaging. Be consistent.
As with anything in life, consistency is crucial. But at the same time, see to it that you’re not posting on your social network profiles for the sake of posting. One engaging post per day can benefit you more than ten posts that you didn’t put any thought into. Being that social media is mostly a free tool at your disposal, make the most of it. If you can’t find the time to post content, you can hire a social media manager. Fret not, with the right planning, you will reap way more than you sow!