Tag: social media

social media

5 Social Media Customer Engagement Tips

Social Media can help you to grow your business – by attracting new customers, by strengthening your relationships with your customers, and by getting customers to refer your business to their friends and colleagues. The key to making this happen is to learn how to use Social Media to engage your customers; to have a conversation with your customers; to learn more about your customers’ needs;  and to help them to see how your business can satisfy their needs. In this article, we’re going to expand on those engagement tips.

1. Finding your customers

The first thing you need to do before engaging customers via social media is to find them! While most of your customers will probably have profiles on several major sites, odds are they either spend most of their time on one site or use them for different purposes (social vs. professional).  Knowing which site (s) they frequent makes it easier to engage them.

The most effective way to know which site your customers come from is closed loop marketing, which is tracking your customers from lead source through customer acquisition. You might think the site that generates the most leads is the best bet, but this isn’t always the case.

If you are unable to close the loop, then you can ask your sales rep to find out from their leads which social media site they use the most. You can also survey your customers if you don’t have a high-touch sales process. Lastly, if all else fails, the general rule of thumb is if you’re B2B, then use LinkedIn. If you’re B2C, use Facebook.

2. Adding Customers to Your Network

After you find your customers, you’ll want to add them to your network, which makes it easier for you to engage them. Unless you have an army of interns that can personally send invites to all your customers, you might want to take a more scalable approach.

One of the simplest ways to do this is to have your sales reps and customer success managers promote a social media account in their email signatures, business cards, etc. If your customers are friends with your employees and your employees share the company blog posts and updates as well as promote your company pages, then it’s easy to reach your customers. Of course, this isn’t always possible, as your employees may be uncomfortable doing this or you may not have 1:1 relationships with your customers.

Some other options are to create your own group and promote it to customers on your website and in product documentation. Just let them know what the group will help them with,such as major news and announcements, strategy guides, customer conversations, feedback, etc. If you don’t want to run a group, then you can always promote your company pages on Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Anyone who likes or follows your company will be in your network.

3. Share Great Content

When trying to engage your customers, don’t just share company news or promotions. Make sure you provide valuable content. If you provide content your customers want to read, they’ll keep coming back. You can then work in some marketing messages on occasion, much like a blog.

4. Actively Engage Customers

In addition to sharing content, you also need to engage your customers. If all you do is share content, you’ll still grow your network and you’ll get some readership. However, to really develop customer loyalty, you need to engage your customers so they feel special.

This doesn’t mean sending them messages and posting on their wall like your great friends. However, you do want to communicate with them. If you have a group or forum, don’t just answer questions but try to ask some of your own and generate discussions. Follow your customers and occasionally promote a great blog article they write or re-tweet something they post. Monitor social media in general for any mentions of your business so you can respond.

5. Stick With It

One of the more frustrating things about using social media and content marketing as a way to engage customers is that, more than anything, it takes time. You need to find your customers, get them in your network, engage them, and get them hooked on your content. This doesn’t happen overnight. In the end, the benefits will be well worth it, but you can’t stop a few months in. If you’re not getting results you want, try changing tactics, but don’t stop. If nothing else, think about how your competitors are doing the same thing. So unless you want them having more loyal customers than you, stick with it.

 

3 Tools to Make Content Marketing Easier

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Unless content marketing is your job, odds are good that you have to try to fit updating your social media platforms and blogs around your other responsibilities. It’s easy to let your content become out of date. Here are 3 great tools you can use to make your content marketing efforts easier.

Schedule Social Media Posts with Social Pilot

If your company markets on multiple social media platforms, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, you’ll waste time if you try to schedule posts using the social media platform itself. Instead, invest in a tool like Social Pilot to schedule posts across all of these different platforms at once. You don’t necessarily want to post the same exact thing at the same time on every platform. However, sometimes it makes sense to share something on multiple platforms.

Make Sure Your Grammar’s On Point with Grammarly

If you write your own posts, invest in a tool like Grammarly. It’s better than normal spellcheckers and lets you know where your writing can be improved. There’s a free edition that points out problems with contextual spelling and grammar. For around $100 a year, you can get the premium edition that lets you know about advanced grammar issues in your posts.

Check on SEO Performance with Yoast

The goal of most business blogs is to generate traffic, engagement, and increased readership. To accomplish this, the post should be written with search engine optimization (SEO) techniques in mind. Yoast is a free WordPress plug-in you can install to see how you can improve your own SEO. It gives you pointers on keyword density and tactics you can use to help with SEO.

Always remember that marketing tools aren’t infallible. You want to still write stellar content that engages with your readers. If you need help with that, email us at info@triassicmedia.com and we’d be happy to help.

The Cheapest Marketing for Your Business

If you’re a small business owner, you want to maximize your marketing dollars to get the best results with the least amount of cash. They’ll look for promotions and buy content in bundles to save money. However, many business owners miss the cheapest opportunity around.

Your Social Media Bio

Most people don’t think of their personal social media account bios as a place to market their business, but it is. Sure, you don’t want to be that person who fills up their feed with promotional content or spam message all of your high school friends. However, you can and should use your social media bio to succinctly say what it is you do and why people should care. People are naturally curious about other people’s jobs, so make sure to use it wisely.

What Not To Say

Do not say “business owner” at a company they don’t recognize or simply “Self-Employed.” It might be cute but it says little about who you are and what you offer them. You want to maximize this opportunity to say what you do in something they recognize.

What to Say

Find how to translate what it is you do into what they understand and need. If you own a soap company, don’t say you’re the owner of a soap company. Say you’re an artisan soap maker with products available at this website. If you sell IT services, the word consultant means nothing. Use your bio to say what type of products you sell or have expertise in. Let them know.

You should never harass your friends to be your customers. Many of them won’t be. But someone might know someone that might.