10 Best Practices when Connecting to Customers with Social Media

In today’s digital age, social media has become perhaps one of, if not the most, common form of interaction between people aside from face to face conversation. Social media provides us with the opportunity to share our opinions, experiences and ask questions of others in a digital environment that connects us with other like-minded people all over the world.

As a business, social media has become an increasingly popular and vital tool in engaging with consumers and reaching your target audience. Maintaining a strong social media presence can help you to create a presence for your business that demonstrates to consumers that you are modern, savvy and up-to-speed on the latest market and consumer trends for your industry. 

However, learning to build and maintain a strong and positive social media presence for your business can be tricky and having an understanding of some social media best practices can go along way in helping your business to connect with customers and build a relationship with your clientele. 

1. Consistent Posting

One key element to maintaining a strong social media presence is consistent posting. Ensuring that you are posting regular content is important in maintaining a consistent position in the forefront of consumers mind and demonstrates that you and your business are continuing to stay up-to-date and current on market trends and the interests of your target audience. 

2. Relevant Content

In addition to posting consistently, it’s important that the content you are posting is relevant. Keeping in mind the audience you are working to target as well as the products and services that you and your business are working to sell, it’s important that the content you are posting is going to be worthwhile and beneficial to your audience. Offer exclusive insights to your brand and design a unique experience for your customers. The key to keeping your audience engaged is by adding value to their lives with through your original branded content.

3. Engagement 

Engagement is perhaps one of the most key elements of maintaining a strong social media presence for your business. Liking the posts and comments of those that interact with your pages and posts is an easy and important way that you can work to validate the opinions and interactions of the consumers you are working to market towards. Connecting with your online audience on a personal level can truly resonate with your customers. For example, if your fans mention you on social media or create content featuring your brand, take the time to reply to them or share their message. Show them how appreciated they are!

4. Conversation 

In connection with engagement, constructing social media posts that work to develop conversation between your business and consumers is another vital best practice for social media usage. Asking questions in your captions and replying to comments provide two key ways in which you can turn your posts into a conversation between you and your audience. 

5. Choose the Right Social Media Networks for Your Audience

In today’s day and age there are a great number of social media outlets available to connect with audiences. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube provide four of the core social media pillars but many businesses interact with their audience through networks like LinkedIn and Pinterest as well. Understanding your target audience and the social media outlets they gravitate towards can help you to best connect with the consumers you are looking to reach. 

6. Connect With Other Businesses and Influencers In Your Industry

Not only can social media be an excellent tool in connecting you with consumers and the target audience you are looking to reach but it can also be an incredible asset in connecting you with other businesses and partners within your industry. These connections can not only help you to gain valuable information about what your competitors are doing and how they are engaging with consumers but it can also help you to forge valuable partnerships and share experiences and learned knowledge amongst industry partners. 

7. Encourage Employees to Be Social Media Brand Ambassadors

Your employees can provide one of the most valuable assets to your business when it comes to building a brand and connecting with customers on social media. Encouraging your employees to interact and share social media posts featuring your products and services can help to broaden your brand and reinforce its image in the public eye. Additionally, having employees share posts about your company and brand on social media works to multiply the number of outlets through which your messaging is being shared on social media working to reach as many consumers as possible. 

8. Don’t Let Negative Feedback Go Unanswered

Negative feedback is never good but leaving it unanswered is even worse. When a consumer leaves negative feedback on one of your social media posts or sends a private message to one of your social media profiles with their concerns its important that you prioritize responding to this feedback as a best practice. Acknowledging and working to amend customer complaints via social media can work to fix customer perceptions of your brand and create an image of your organization as one who cares for, values and respects the opinions of its customers and clients. 

9. Utilize Uniquely Branded Hash-tagging 

Unique branded hash-tagging can provide an easy and effective way through which customers can connect with your company and brand over social media. Creating a unique hashtag that your company can use in branding their posts can then in turn be used to encourage customers to share their own unique posts using that hashtag. This can provide valuable insight into the interests of your customers and provide great opportunity for one-to-one engagement between your brand and the customers that it most closely interacts with. 

10. Keep It Light-Hearted

Finally, social media is meant to be fun and casual and your posts should reflect that tone. Social media works to create a more intimate and personalized connection between your business and consumers and keeping posts light and conversational in nature are key in creating a natural and well-received social media presence for your business.