Five Tips to Connect with Your Customers on Social Media

Five Tips to Connect with Your Customers on Social Media

Although businesses operating in social media are becoming the normal standard in today’s technological world, it’s still a brand new concept to many businesspeople out there. The idea that an entire business can be operated online, or even just the advertising arm – it’s a bit much to handle for people used to live, on-location businesses. For this reason, a lot of brands online today don’t reach out and connect with people the way they should.

However, think about your customer’s social media site for a minute. What exactly is old Johnny doing on Facebook and Twitter all day? One thing he’s not doing: Spending his days looking for your specific business to spend his money on! That’s just the reality in all of business; it’s your job to attract customers, not their job to find you.

Because of so much competition in the social realm and so many other distractions, a social brand connecting directly with customers takes on an entirely new level of importance. You must gain and keep their attentions if you hope to succeed. Here are a few tips you can try to make that happen.

How to Connect with Your Social Customers Effectively

1: Speak Directly to Your Fans

Now, the emphasis here is on “your” fans, not simply fans in general. Though you may want to market more broadly at times in order to build up a base, to gain some recognition and to influence more leads and shares, you need to stick primarily with speaking directly to people involved in your exact niche. Speaking to your true fans with a clear, distinct voice is going to endear you to them. Connecting with social customers is much easier when you’re dealing with actual customers, not simply passersby.

2: Engage More with People

Engagement is the name of the game with social media. The more you’re able to engage with people, the more people you’re going to be able to reach. Because of Facebook’s algorithm and the way sites like Twitter and YouTube are set up, brands/pages that are engaged with more frequently will be made more readily available to people via their home pages, in their News Feeds, in their suggestion bars/boxes, etc. Delivering content that earns more Likes, comments and shares will help you connect with a much broader base of customers.

3: Keep Off-Site Relationships

You might run a Facebook promotion and end up with thousands of new leads (email addresses), but what exactly do you do with people after that? After things get narrowed down and you have decided which of the leads are now customers or are most likely to become customers, you should keep up appearances with them through emails. A great way to keep your customers happy and to keep them hanging around is to keep a dialogue open with them. Offer them special promotions, ask them if everything’s okay, send them holiday greetings, etc.

4: Be More Visual in Your Marketing

Connections are often started through basic social media engagement, so it stands to reason that the more engaged a person actually is with your brand, the more connected you’re ultimately going to be. So make sure you pique everyone’s interests by posting content that’s much more visual. Short, entertaining video clips, funny memes, quality inforgraphics, custom art, event photos and videos – these are all materials that will be Liked, shared and commented on more than basic text-based material.

5: Reach Out to Your Customers

This works with everyone on your social media sites, whether they’re brand new fans or loyal customers. The idea is to actually reach out to people to make them feel welcomed at your location. Make them feel like part of a community. You can do this by offering a customer/fan appreciation post, an entire day set aside for them, special deals and discounts, cool games and puzzles, and a slew of other methods. The idea is to reach out to your customers to let them know that they’re appreciated. People who feel like they’re part of a community are much more likely to return and to continue to do business with you.

Much of business is all about the connections you’re able to make. Whether that’s connections with vendors, with other similar businesses, with your customers, or even with brand new fans, those connections are going to bolster your brand in numerous ways. You should constantly be thinking about different ways to reach out and connect with people.

The five tips listed above provide a great starting point, but keep your ear to the ground when doing business on social media. Be on the lookout for different ways and means to connect with people. The efforts you put in will certainly pay off.

Post written by:

Simon Campbell, a writer from a Facebook ad campaign tool – Qwaya. He loves to write different topics about social media and participates in some communities and forums.