Social media has this much popularity as it is in our DNA simply. Who doesn't want to be wanted in this world? Don't we feel lonely when nobody talks to us. Social media can be, and now is the simple solutions for all this loners who need interaction. So why are we afraid of it as marketers??? We don't have a chance actually. Because with or without us involved in the conversation, it is already taking place. So what we can do is to jump in, listen and try to transform the negative comments to positive ones through engagement and use the positive comments and they will volunteer to jump in to your rescue in bad times. In other words we can create evangelists to our brands.
Most of us think that facebook, twitter and youtube is social media, where it is not. There are social bookmarking sites, social media submission sites, forums and discussion sites,media sharing sites and reviews and rating sites which are not popular comparing to the social network sites we are familiar with. Through being available on these sites, as brand managers we can get to know what customers are talking about us or what are the hot topics lately and we can link them with are products, we can upgrade our profile by interacting more with customers and likewise the benefit list will be never ending, if we do the right things.
Blogs, Podcasts, Microblogs and Wiki's are other strong social media. People are increasingly turning to blogs to talk about their user experience and as marketers we can have our company blogs to create productive content on things our customers are interested in, other than pushing our product information to them. Podcasts are not that easy to create. But if you are in an industry where podcasts can be really useful it is time to go ahead. Twitter is the most famous micro blog available as at now. Even though people thought micro-blogging was of no use, getting so many short messages from your loved ones make you FEEL for them. So as marketers what we can do is to make our customers feel for us. Wiki's are online collections of webpages which are editable. For example we see millions of Wikipedia pages on the net. There can be a question about the accuracy. But the simple answer is, when viewers pick inaccurate content, it will be changed soon, so the inappropriate content will not last long. As marketers we can attract the wisdom of our customers towards our brands.
To engage with customers in real time, there are some rules you can engage with.
- Draw on what you already know- As we already know our customers we just have to align our social media strategy with them
- Don't jump in unprepared- Always have a good plan on what you are going to do and what you want to achieve
- Look,listen and learn- Don't look for short term results. Take time to understand the platforms and take the maximum out of their best characteristics
- Be open, honest and authentic- Don't promise your customers things you cannot give and try to smooth out the negative comments realistically.
- Be relevant, interesting and entertaining
- Don't push out a 'spammy' message
- Respect 'rules' of the sites your engaging with
- Respect people as healthy debates are fine but we have to realize that the customers have a right to their opinions similarly as us in disagreeing situations.
- Respond to feedback
So there are many ways of deeply engaging with your customers other than just facebook. Try it all out. It is an interesting world out there!!!!!!!!
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