Improving Service and Community Engagement Using Social Media

People increasingly turn to social media to engage with organisations. Well conceived, designed, and managed social media gives you the most powerful tools available to effectively connect with customers on a personal as well as group basis to solve issues and create brand advocates.

How can you use social media effectively?

Customers turn to Social Media when they have a problem and want to air their grievances. In most cases, they have tried to get solutions from the organisations concerned, but, without satisfaction. Marketers can prevent most customer service issues from escalating, not only by having easier and better complaint and issue response mechanisms but also by proactively using social media to regularly engage and share ideas and information proactively with customers. Using social media as a customer service channel is about making a genuine connection with something that both you and your market (customer) care about.

Use your social media channels to speak to customers and share ideas, new programmes, innovations, and, yes, “problems” early. Social media engagement allows organisations to communicate quickly and directly to their target segment(s) (customers and prospects). Don’t wait or rely on formal communication; engage early. Say what has been happening and what you are trying to do about it. Invite suggestions and help. Demonstrate that you remember and value them as individuals. Engage your customers by presenting them with a smile, making posts often.

Let them know you actually care! Your audience will recognise the value you create if every post you write is centred around bringing usefulness to them. When customers feel a strong emotional connection with your brand and with other people in the context of your brand, they will make your brand and brand community on Social networks stronger.

Be human! Brands with identifiable humans will seem more down-to-earth and in tune with customers.

Brand engagement is about making the human connection. Always focus on building strong emotional connections, but back up the emotional connection with hard facts and you will be in the right place.

Make it and keep it “real.” Your interaction with customers must be authentic. You cannot and should not, try to force or trick customers into sharing. Social networks are not principally designed to drive revenue and traffic. Ensure that your content is primarily social in tone.

Give your community a voice

Identify the leaders within your community and support them. They are some of your most valuable assets. Reach out to them and listen to how they feel about your brand

Help your customers get the most out of your products, so they love them even more! Know how customers think about your products. They like what the product does for them, how it helps them, or how it makes them feel.

Customers who take the time to engage with your brand should be acknowledged and cared about like they were friends of yours on your personal social networks.

Say “thank you” to customers who are loyal and/or have made extra efforts for you. Businesses often ignore this or give it a quick “like” and move on. These are the customers who could become advocates and do so much more for the brand. Don’t just focus on the squeaky wheels (complainers).

Invite feedback. Invite customers to a meetup/hangout, like Google+ hangouts. Encourage members of your target group(s) to meet up with one another to help each other. Use the right social media to create groups based on shared common interests. Encourage and help those groups to get the tools they need to become helpful to themselves and, therefore, to your organisation. Those networking groups are an excellent way to develop positive engagement and help your market(s) feel supported by your organisation.

Different folks, different strokes

Social media cannot be used in the same way for different brands. Targeted segments are going to be different from others. Do the research; take the time to clarify what your brand is. It is what your customers think it is. Ask your customers what they think. This is a key factor in using social media in customer service and community engagement strategy.

Do not rely just on simple market research questions. Go for depth as well and come back to some respondents using experienced qualitative researchers.

Let your community know you are actively listening, which means it’s your responsibility to read and respond in a timely way.

Conclusion

Social media is an extremely powerful tool and there are many features that will benefit your business tremendously. You just need to become acquainted with all of its potential and then decide which features will work well for your business.

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