…consumers are now in a position to deliver a whopper of an ultimatum to businesses: meet expectations, or die.
You can thank Katy Keim for that quote in her recent article for Ad Age about building relationships with consumers via social media. She brings up many good points about this dichotomy, including that due to one bad experience with your brand on social media, a customer is usually lost to you for good. All it takes is one social post that elicits an “Eh” reaction for customers to dislike or unfollow your brand.
We’re usually focused on the idea that social media is a way for consumers to promote companies and brands, but in reality, it’s more of a place for them to criticize us. On my Facebook timeline, the businesses I follow have to compete with my best friend’s engagement photos, a funny joke from my dad, and a video of my nephew at the zoo. If their content doesn’t meet my expectations of completely dazzling me like all of the other content on my timeline does, I will stop following those businesses. Gasp!
If your heart is not thumpity-thumping a little faster at the thought of how I and many consumers like me are snubbing your brand on social media, then look more closely at the stats. According to Keim, 57 percent of social customers say they won’t buy any more of a company’s products or services after a single negative experience, and 40 percent say they are also likely to warn others to stay away after a poor experience.
That’s not good news, as is sometimes the case with the truth. But it should motivate us as digital marketers to focus time and energy on our social media strategies.
If it only takes one so-so post for a consumer to gain a negative experience with your brand, it’s worth your time and energy to spend more than a few minutes a day creating those posts. Marketing smarter means more than personalizing your email campaigns – it includes personalizing your social media updates to your audiences’ preferences so you become just as beloved as the picture of their Grandpa Joe’s birthday party.
Think.
Take your hands off your computer keyboard. Travel back to fifth grade when you had a piece of paper and a pencil and you had to brainstorm for an essay. Don’t think about what you want to say to your customers; think about what your customers want to hear about. Create a strategy for your social media, perhaps with different types of posts going out on different social media outlets.
Hold back.
Didn’t have time to strategize a perfect Facebook post for today? Then don’t post one. Remember, all it takes is one “eh” post to turn a customer away. Don’t risk it. Instead, trying sharing or retweeting a partner’s or customer’s post.
Keep an eye on social.
Your social media metrics, that is. The best way to implement personalization is giving your customers what they want. If a certain social post gets more attention than others, you need to think (again) about what your customer likes about that post and if you can create more posts like it.
Be human.
Sell more than your products and services on social media; sell the human side of your company. As an example, we posted an office pizza-roll eating contest on Facebook and Twitter the other day. We did this because not only are we a digital marketing company with products and services, but more than that, we work as a team and enjoy life. We wanted to share that part of who we are with our social friends.
We continue to brainstorm ways to improve our social media strategy, and by no means are we perfect at it. But we want to get you thinking about how we each can be marketing our businesses smarter on social media.
Joy Ugi
Digital Marketing Coordinator, WhatCounts
@ugigirl
