3 Reasons Interacting on Social Media is a Powerful Marketing Strategy

3 Reasons Interacting on Social Media is a Powerful Marketing Strategy

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With the explosion of social media over the past decade, it is more important than ever to interact with your customers on social media! In the past, businesses have relied on traditional forms of media such as television, radio, or print to communicate with their customers. One of the problems with communicating through these traditional forms of media is that the conversation is often one-sided with little to no chance for feedback or interaction. But with social media, businesses have the opportunity to participate in full conversations with their customers.

Interacting with customers on social media allows businesses to do three important things.
  1.  It allows businesses to develop a brand that is approachable, engaging, and friendly; essentially humanizing the brand.
  2.  It builds brand awareness.
  3.  It develops customer trust and loyalty.
The overall goal of interacting with customers on social media is to develop an online personality so that your brand becomes easily recognizable while making customers feel valued.

1. Humanizing Your Brand

Responding to DMs, customer complaints, or shout outs whenever customers reach out to you over social media is not only wise but a genius marketing strategy too! Reaching out to customers over social media lets them know that there is a human behind your brand, a human who cares about what their customers have to say. Not only does it make customers feel listened to, but it also creates the idea that your business has a personality. With millions of other businesses on social media, it is important to develop a personality that is unique in order to stand out.

Take Seamless for example. Seamless is a food delivery company that operates in many major cities across the country, and their social media game is off the charts. Seamless is an example of a brand that people can really connect with because they have managed to develop a personality and convey it across social media. On Twitter, some of their strategies include sharing food photography, posting memes, coming up with puns, and creating original and funny content. One of their tweets, posted on March 1st, states, “You can only have one of these for the rest of your life, don’t overthink it.” The tweet included a picture of a bacon cheeseburger and a picture of a pepperoni pizza. It’s funny Twitter jokes like this that make people feel connected to Seamless and is perhaps the reason many people choose Seamless over other food delivery services. The Seamless brand is a prime example of how developing an online personality, by sharing funny and relatable content, can humanize your brand.

2. Build Brand Awareness

Building brand awareness can be challenging because consumers are constantly overloaded with messages, links, pictures, and promotions. The trick is to think outside of the box and come up with something different to say. Practicing traditional social media marketing can no longer be an option. You have to completely break the mold and brainstorm an entirely different approach to social media.

It’s no secret that peoples’ attention spans are diminishing only allowing you a few seconds to catch someone’s eye. In order to do this, your social media accounts must be very visually appealing, out of the ordinary, and easily recognizable on social media. To achieve a brand that is anything but ordinary, you should avoid using generic stock photography on a consistent basis. Instead, focus your efforts on brainstorming content that breaks the mold, is personable, and appeals to human nature. Just like in everyday life, people enjoy humor, bright colors, gifs, memes, puns, and lots of unique photos. On social media, there is nothing wrong with experimenting with photos, gifs, and even memes. You can also try connecting with your customers by tagging or mentioning them in posts on social media. This creates a collaborative environment that lets your customers know that interacting with them is important to you. Having an upbeat and fun brand is the easiest way to connect with your customers. You can absolutely achieve a brand that is professional but also personable! 

3. Build Customer Trust and Loyalty

By interacting with customers on social media, you can easily build trust by showing your customers that you are responsive and interested in what they have to say. Social media is a great avenue to handle customer complaints in a quick and personable way. No business likes receiving customer complaints, but complaints are somewhat inevitable. Reaching out to customers about their complaints on social media shows that your business cares and wants to fix the problem.   Interacting with customers on social media also allows people to see that your business is not just another faceless organization, but a business that is operated by people who care and want to help their customers. In hard times it is important to show people that your business cares and wants to be a positive light to their communities.

A great example that happened recently is with the company Crocs. The shoe company is donating 10,000 pairs of shoes to healthcare workers in the U.S. as part of their “A Pair for Healthcare” initiative. Hospitals across the United States have experienced equipment shortages and Crocs proved through their donation that businesses can make a meaningful difference in the world.

Often times, when you show your ability to be compassionate, especially during hard times, customers will respect and trust your business more than ever before. Addressing the condition of the world over social media is an easy way to build customer loyalty because they will remember your ability to respond to difficult situations with compassion