Well wrong, Mr/ Miss/ Mrs Marketing Manager. That ain't how things go down in social land. Sure your customers love your product or service, but they don't automatically love the fact you're talking about it online all the time. They might not even KNOW you talk about it online all the time, they might be completely unaware of you even having a social media presence. This is bad. It's bad for you because your talking to an empty space and it's bad for them because they're missing out on all your great offers. So what can you do to put this all right? Let's lift up the covers and dive inside the potential warmth that is a successful social media strategy for your company. Come on, life's more fun when we do things together.
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| Let's all be friends. |
The first important thing to remember is that being on social media is not about the hard sell. People want to know what you do and they want to know when you've got special offers on, but they don't want you to be yapping on about it all the time. It's a massive turn off and it will discourage customers from interacting or even paying attention at all. Keep the sales talk light, keep it friendly and keep it in the tone of voice you use for the rest of your advertising. You want to encourage the growth of a community, not sell double glazing at the doorstep.
Secondly social media won't spread your word if your word is boring. While it's always a good idea to have a simple message when space is so limited, that doesn't mean you should turn off your creativity completely. Be clever, be imaginative, be different. If you're a plumber there will be hundreds of other plumbers online all trying to do the same thing, you saying 'I'll fix your pipes,' isn't going to make you stand out.
One of the main mistakes a lot of brands make on social is that they forget their fans are human beings. Don't treat your customers like idiots. Using capital letters and quotation marks to highlight engagement actions (like, share, retweet etc) might seem like a tempting idea, but it comes across as patronising and it really isn't needed. Everyone knows what these words mean and if you encourage people to do them using a bit of imaginative thinking rather than shouting you'll see it's a lot more effective.
Finally social media is vastly different to advertising using any other method. It gives you the opportunity to engage and interact with your customers like no other media can offer, so do it! You wouldn't just expect people to walk into your store if you didn't have a sign outside, so don't expect people to interact with your social efforts if you're not talking to them there either. Get involved with their conversations, follow people you think might be interested in what you have to offer and work on actively growing your networks rather than just hoping they'll grow by themselves.
If you give people a reason to interact with you, if you make it an enjoyable and interesting experience for them and if your content is engaging and creative then you'll see your results start to match the work you're putting in.