With so many social media sites, it's important to listen to what your customer's are saying online.
Social media is here to stay, and for many companies social networking is a great way to connect with customers and build brand equity. Allowing people to interact with their favorite companies and share the businesses they like with each other is a wonderful way to interact with customers and get feedback about your company, the products and the service.
For many retailers, fan pages on Facebook and group discount sites like Living Social and Groupon have changed the way that they market products to their customers. If you want to reach out to your client base effectively, you have to know how to listen online. The highly connected environment of today is both a blessing and a curse. The good things about your company can spread quickly, but the negative information spreads even quicker.
Here are some tips for successfully listening to your customers online:
- Create a plan ahead of time – When you first enter the social networking arena, you should have a plan in place ahead of time to deal with both the positive and negative buzz that is sure to develop from time to time. Your plan should outline what sort of response time you can expect for different types of situations. You should have a plan on how often you intend to review conversations and how quickly you can respond. If there is a negative buzz about your company, often the situation can be turned around by responding in a timely manner. When something disastrous happens online, like an employee posts negative videos about your company on YouTube or a blogger writes a scathing criticism of your company, you will want to already have a plan in place to try to stop the buzz from growing.
- Get involved and get connected – It's tempting to just be a bystander in the social media game, but in order to get the best results, you have to participate and get involved with your customers. Being connected with your company and your client base is key in establishing a great rapport with your customers and building your brand reputation.
- Use your resources to monitor what people are saying about you or your company – Set up a Google Alert or use monitoring software to find out what people are saying about you or your company online. By knowing where you stand and if your company is attracting friends or enemies is the best way to monitor how well you are doing.
Have you used social media to market your company? Let me know in the comments.
By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for RetailGigsBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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