Social media has changed the way businesses and brands interact with their customers greatly. Businesses are now offering customer support through their social media pages. More importantly, users and customers can interact with the brands they use directly, creating the kind of relationship that wasn’t possible with conventional marketing instruments.
Although social media is a great way to share promotional offers and information, there are more ways to use it for marketing purposes. That’s what we are going to look at in this article.
Better Ways to Connect with Customers
It is not uncommon for customers to sound their complaints through social media. In fact, certain social networks like Twitter offer the extra convenience that persuade customers to channel their frustration right in the moment. What started as a quick complaint on social media can also cross over to review sites and longer bad reviews.
Taking social media posts seriously is always a good idea. React properly to complaints as quickly as possible and worry about whether the complaints are justified later. The same goes for bad reviews on sites like Yelp and Trust Pilot.
Sun Bingo is one of the best brands to learn from when it comes to handling user complaints on social media and review sites. The company always reacts quickly and takes proper measures to ensure customer satisfaction at all times. Even when the complaining customer is very disappointed, the company has a way of reacting that leads to that customer giving Sun Bingo a second chance.
Online and Offline Marketing
Social media is a great online marketing instrument to use, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring the same user engagement and connections offline. In fact, the best social media campaigns are the ones that integrate online user engagement with offline actions.
A coffee shop in New York started using social media to promote their charity. When a customer tweets a picture of their cup of coffee and mention the shop’s Twitter account, the coffee shop will donate another cup of coffee to those who can’t afford one.
The campaign clearly combines in-store visits and social media posts beautifully. The campaign ran for a couple of weeks and managed to get a lot of attention from both the shop’s existing customers and new ones coming for a cup of coffee upon seeing the social media posts.
Going Viral
It is also important to note that social media marketing doesn’t always mean sharing promotional info or offers. In today’s social media scene, content matters more than ever. Instead of sharing promotional offers, for instance, you can attract more user engagement through product placements in content that users actually enjoy.
Big brands are taking the same route too. Epson, for instance, is producing and publishing a series of web videos (a web series) about office workers. The videos are funny and heart-warming, but they don’t focus on Epson products at all. As a matter of fact, Epson printers only appear occasionally in them.
What Epson focuses more on are their key values, displayed through characters and videos that are very pleasant to watch. These key messages are accepted even better by the audience simply because the videos are not promotional in any way.
These simple ways of using social media can really help take your marketing efforts to a new level. Start taking advantage of social media to reach more customers and you’ll be surprised to see the impact.
