Helpful ways of Catching Customers Through Social Media

Hey all, so its been a while since i wrote another blog post for Digitarium, other things had been keeping me busy lately, soo finally getting a little time today i decided to keep today’s post very simple and related to one of the things i talk most about here i.e. ways/tips on interacting and getting customers/audiences through the Social Media.

Here goes.

Search,Search and Search a bit more: the Social Media sphere is huge and believe it or not if you have a brand you might not be aware of people talking about it half the time, if not directly people might be using key words which are associated with your brand or word that might match your brand name, so you need to find these people,filter out these words on the Social Media, especially Twitter, use TweetDeck to put searches on specific words,tags. or associated brand words and find out whoever is talking about anything related to your brand,narrow them down and give them shout-outs a customer loves nothing better then the brand addressing them personally.

Pictures are always good: in today’s world people do not have time to read lengthy content, articles and paragraphs, but IF you post up a picture it can speak volumes..literally.. the probability of people engaging in conversation and feedback with you or your brand is twice as much when you put up a catchy picture or any sort of visual reference/ medium for the audience to interact with.

Use different platforms: Brands on the Social Media need to realize that their competitors might be using more than 1 medium of Digital communication, BUT they also need to realize that if they are using different Social Media Platforms for promotion they need to focus on attracting users on that specific platform, uniform offers all around different networks is not the best way to expand on Social Media, if an audience can find a brand promotion on Facebook and finds the same brand promotion on Twitter, then he would go on to the platform he is more accustomed to rather then going to all of em.try making exclusive offers on different Social Networks, to keep audience interested.

Lets Get Competing: Competitions are the best “evergreen” way of gathering volumes of followers and fans on your social media, it brings people on your page and it actually gets them to interact even. But, yes you need to be a little strategic when it comes to hosting these competitions, because this can attract a lot of unwanted or “fake” followers too. so yes hold competitions but looks for “quality” over “quantity” when devising competitions, so that you get loyal followers.

Lets Get Personal: People like it more when you are addressing them personally, they would be more inclined towards listening to you and do what you tell them to, if you address them individually they would prefer talking to you/your brand more rather than going towards others, and they will sooner or later turn into brand advocates for you. A consumer appreciates it more when a brand shouts out to them personally.

Ciao.

Using Social Media for Instant Feedback

In this day and age the only other thing that moves as fast as the speed of light is social media. It has proven to be a superb tool for communicating and connecting with customers/fans,provide Real-time responses to them and maintain a very active relationship with them, another use which marketers should now consider for social media is, collecting feedback.

• Pre-product launch feedback: its has been witnessed time and time again that whenever a product brings in news features or extensions to its existing line consumers show hesitation towards taking up the change, they react by leaving comments on how they don’t want the brand to be doing this and how their life would be made harder than it already is if this change was to take effect,but slowly steadily they do come around to adapting it. What marketers need to look at at this point is that many a times these comments,complaints or discussions bring out elements and points regarding the product which might have been over looked by the brand team or the marketers on a whole. COLLECT this feedback,compile it and store if for further improvements.
• Create Focus Groups:  this is an excellent way of gathering information regarding your product or any plans you have for it. Start Polls, Discussion forums on Facebook or Google+, Tweetboards,Twitter Chats because for gathering good feedback you need to delve deeper into customer interactions, holding discussion forums actually helps in targeting the audience you are trying to capture hence ensuring you receive very focused comments and suggestions. Conducting engaging surveys and polls is always a good idea for generating feedback.
•  Industry Expertise in Useful: One of the basic roles of social media is to expand and strengthen your network, and at the same time it has made it easier for your brand to get in touch with opinion leaders and influencers who drive buying behaviors,get in touch with them hear what they have to say, record and apply those things.
• Use Blogs: try writing once in a while, if you face writers block, visit your social network and ask people around on what challenges they feel when writing or ask them anything,this will help in developing ideas in your head once that is done simply share those ideas in the form of a blog. You can also use a professional approach and start a company blog,share posts on it all around the Social sphere, it will help in generating comments and feedback.
• Develop an Identity: Develop an identity for your brand, a persona of sorts something people can relate with and then use that persona on your Social Network while communicating with your audience, its been seen people respond to personas and similar identities more easily and in a more comfortable manner. Good for extracting suggestions.
• Keep a lookout for your Brand: its not necessary that audience might only be talking about your brand on your Brand fan page,they might be mentioning the brand, or commenting on the brand in other social spheres as well, its your job to keep a look out on related pages, competitors or complementary brand pages to see if your brand is being mentioned somewhere, and more importantly which tone is it being mentioned in.

So if you think there are other ways of gathering genuine and important feedback through the social media let me know 🙂