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Over time, some social media platforms can lose their initial popularity or significance. However, 'socialness' never changes. Regardless of the platform, each one gives businesses unequalled access and insight into their customers. When this information is used thoughtfully, businesses become privy to their customer's innermost thoughts, questions, interests, concerns, and dilemmas. In this post, we will look at how and why social media is the secret tool for operating a successful business.
Without question, trustworthy companies are created from enduring relations. Customers initiate their transactions with 'company reps', irrespective of the company's status. So, to grow these business relationships, trust must be involved. But how do you start building trust? Here's how:
The key is being available to the community members. For example, answer and follow up with all the direct messages and comments from users. Give value to those who read and interact with your posts. View them as people who may promote your business. Not as data or credit cards. They are people.
Showing your face in a video or an occasional selfie can really resonate with customers. Seeing you online for a long time can make them feel like they know you because they've seen how you interact with people and what you post. Showing some humanity is valuable because your followers are interested in knowing you, not just what's being marketed. Examples are posting photos of fun company staff outings or perhaps retweets from admired companies/individuals.
Additionally, don't forget the power of humility. Trust can be built by admitting your mistakes. Sharing content describing what you've learned along the way is a great place to start, along with adding a bit of humour.
Trust gets built from being helpful and being honest. Just as you can see that with friends, it's also true on social media. Honesty should be applied to your customer's questions and queries. Transparency shows that you do care about them. Responding quickly and even quirkily to every customer query, whether or not they're worthy of being answered in the first place, can generate higher engagement and often praise from the social media community.
Along with being honest and transparent, having a consistent tone is vital to building trust across social media. If the best manner of voice for your business is friendly and conversational, reflect that in all the captions, answers, and messages you post and send to your users.
Even though it can take a lot of time to build up trust, it takes very little time to break it. Trust can be destroyed in an instant if people' sense' you are misleading, deceptive, or you promote some specific cause and do nothing to support it.
So far, we've outlined the importance of building trust by being present, human, and transparent. Now we'll focus on understanding the power of listening. Most people listen with the intent to reply rather than the goal to understand. Especially with social media. No matter if it's what people say about your product or service, what your competitors are doing, or what the buzz is in your industry, the key to success is listening with the goal of complete understanding. When you know what's going on in your respective industry, you're more apt to find your way to participate in that conversation.
The term "valuable content" for digital users has different meanings for different people. A useful identification filter to use is "help, don't hype."
Listen to the questions being asked in your industry and answer them with your product or service. Inherent value is created when problems such as "How is this done?", "Where can I find that?" or "How does this work?" are resolved rather than just selling your products. Users get a distinct impression that you know what you're doing, and they can really trust your products or services, even if a specific product isn't mentioned anywhere in the blog post.
Here are some ways to begin creating content that's of value to your users, no matter what your area of business:
Many companies nowadays post information about their business. The content becomes more valuable to a customer when it's personalized for them, answers a problem they might have, or inspires them. Customer-focused content is what helps your customers make informed decisions and keeps them returning to you.
The famous phrase, "There's no such thing as a stupid question." is especially true when it involves your audience. Encourage them to ask questions and provide their feedback. You cannot define what is valuable. Only your audience can. So ask. Every question that your ideal client asks is an opportunity to create valuable content that answers that question. To determine what content appears to deliver the largest impact on your audience, review your website analytics. You can also check your website analytics to find out which content seems to have the most audience impact and concentrate on producing additional content in the same arena.
Valuable content helps people to understand your product or service and stimulates positive engagement amongst the users. However, this doesn't mean re-strategizing content purely for higher engagement levels. For success on social media, your content needs to be useful and informative, or people will look elsewhere.
Your best social media platform to use is the one where the people you want (your potential customers) are the most active. It might be Twitter, Instagram, or one of several others.
You will need to review your business and resources. Here are some of the top social media platforms:
Social media is never a 'One and Done' relationship. It is always ongoing and evolving. What's critical is knowing it's not only concerning increasing your number of customers but also about extending your capacity and impacting your business sector. With the intention of advancement, review these useful guides:
Always remember, it's not about technology; it's about the people. Social media platforms, without a doubt, can bring us together on both a personal and professional level with others. Perhaps the best way to move ahead, no matter how big or small your business, is using social media as a tool for understanding people. When your business prioritizes this understanding using open and honest engagement, trust can be slowly built, and success can indeed be had.
A Markethive Entrepreneur and a strong advocate of the Markethive mission for technology, world progress, and freedom of speech. I support change and endeavour to help others understand, grow, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.
