Remember the time when mail was the primary method for advertising?
The company would design entire brochures, send them for printing, compile their mail, hand it over to the mailman, and then you would receive it.
Imagine the spending and wastage in the process.
Today, if an organization were to employ such a method, we can guarantee that it will go broke before it could engage any customers.
The Age Of Social Media
The only reason that such a mediocre way for marketing and engagement worked was for lack of a better alternative. Today, that gap no longer exists.
There are so many channels that the strategy to manage all channels in a uniform manner is called omnichannel management.
And no matter where people are, or they aren’t, every customer exists on social media. The amount of time spent on social media by internet users every day has constantly been on the rise over the past couple of years. Specially, during this time of the global pandemic, it has risen to a greater extent.
And if organizations did not realize such a trend, they would constantly be losing out. Any organization that functions with a profit motive in mind cannot afford to make that mistake. This is why organizations have not just rushed to social media but cluttered it!
There is more to social media than just the fact that it is an “alternative channel.” The benefits that social media brings through just one channel are way too many to be ignored just like that.
In fact, when it comes to social media, it is too huge to ignore. The number of different avenues over the internet in the shape of platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vine, Pinterest, LinkedIn and so many more just cannot be ignored!
Managing Engagement Over Social Media
However, the very fact that social media is huge and encompasses so much means that it becomes nearly impossible to handle all of it.
Entire teams are hired to ensure that omnichannel management is implemented. Yet, there is barely ever a perfect example of omnichannel management.
To make it a little easy for all organizations that try to tread the path of engagement on social media, here is how you can amp up your effort:
1. Play on Your Niche
When it comes to social media marketing, every organization believes that being on the top 3 is a must. In that endeavor, everyone understands that Facebook is the leader, with about 68% of adults using that network.
However, Facebook is no professional platform. People over Facebook use it for their daily dose of entertainment through memes or sometimes to stay updated with trends. This means that there is no real market for your offering, and you will have to scour the platform to find people that might be interested.
While it is important to maintain a presence over the biggest social media channels, it is much more important to maintain a presence over a platform that relates exactly to your field. For instance, if you are a designer selling vintage clothes, your presence over Pinterest will be much more important than Facebook.
2. Stay Oriented
What many startups fail to recognize is that their social media is a depiction of their own selves. And no matter how big a brand gets, it must always display its face as clearly as possible. They should clearly depict a brand’s offering and its Unique Selling Point.
Why is that important?
This is important because about 32% of consumers learn about a brand’s products and services through social media accounts. If your brand wants to have a real impact on its target audience, then handling social media is necessary.
Any and all efforts on social media should also be uniform. If a brand launches a campaign, it should run uniformly across all platforms. If a brand starts a social effort, it should be on each platform. This is called consistency in brand image.
Brand consistency ensures that every customer that comes in contact with your brand gets a consistent experience. This can increase your profits by up to 23%.
3. Mobile Phones!
If you go back about 7 to 8 years, the prevalence of social media will not seem as strong. In fact, even when it was seen to be present, it existed mostly on desktop PCs. In such a case, managing your social media effort over the limited platforms was rather easy.
Today, however, the world has adopted mobile. Statistics suggest that the use of social media today is mostly on mobile rather than on personal computers. In fact, numbers from 2019 dictate that the number of people using social media on mobile was about 3.3 billion.
With that said, it becomes apparent what brands and companies need to do. There is an imperative need to ensure that each brand optimizes its social media marketing efforts over mobile. Be it advertisements, content, or backlinks, and all need to be responsive to smaller screens for mobiles and tablets.
4. Respond
One of the most underestimated metric for measuring social media success is the customer response rates. Statistics suggest that about one-third of customer complaints are never answered! On top of that, answering a complaint can increase your customer advocacy by about 25%!
With that said, it is alarming to see how few complaints get answered. Seeing this very statistic, many social media platforms now allow access to virtual chatbots on their own platforms. While these bots may not answer very specific answers, they do provide information to repeated questions, which increases customer gratification.
In essence, most people believe that a business should respond to a customer query within a day or less! These would include queries not only in your inbox but also on the comments of your posts where you promote your offerings.
While not getting a reply may be frustrating for a customer, it gives them the impression that the brand does not care about its customer base. This is especially true if you are a widely successful brand with an extensive customer base. This metric clearly shows how destructive the idea of unresponsiveness can be to your Customer Lifetime Value.
5. Connect
One of the biggest paradoxes of social media for brands is that it is not just another platform to sell. Social media is predominantly a platform for you to connect with your customers. While you may choose to have your own shop over social media platforms, it is essential to understand that that is not the sole purpose of social media.
Social media is where you get real insights into your customers. This is where you actually talk to them and personify your brand to make it more than just a corporate identity. Therefore, the best content on social media is not sales content, but value-adding content that is important for your customers.
Final Word
What is very exciting and yet frightening about social media is that it keeps changing. No one brand can engineer one method to always win. Adapting is the way forward with social media and will always be. So, if anything, add the ability to adapt to your organization.
