When creating content for your social media accounts, your business’s top priority should be driving traffic to your website. The second most important aspect to consider is the needs of your followers, customers, potential customers and volunteers. If your social media accounts aren’t meeting these needs, your followers may stop following you and may even seek out one of your competitors. So what do you need to do to make sure the needs of these users are met through your social media accounts?
Each Follower Represents A Person In Front Of A Screen
No matter what type of business you are part of, it is vitally important to meet the needs of your customers, which includes answering questions and providing helpful insights and advice regarding your products and/or services. It is extremely important to remember that each and every legitimate follower of your blog and social media accounts represents a real person. Even if your customers never physically meet you they still expect many of the same things that customers expect of in-person encounters. Just as a customer or potential customer should never be ignored on a sales floor, you must ensure that your social media followers and blog readers aren’t being ignored as well.
Replying In A Timely Manner
If your business has a blog or various social media accounts, you must ensure that you are addressing questions, complaints and other types of messages posted or sent to your accounts in a timely manner. You may believe that a comment, post or message sent isn’t as serious as a more formal email or phone call, but your readers and followers may feel otherwise and will act accordingly if they feel ignored by your business. It is therefore wise to apply the same turnaround or service guarantee to your blog and social media accounts that you apply to your emails and phone calls from customers; if you’re committed to answering emails and texts within half a business day, the same policy should apply to your blog and social media.
Keep An Eye On Your Accounts
Luckily, keeping an eye on your accounts does not require that you or a member of your organization stay constantly logged in to your accounts. Modern blogging platforms such as WordPress and all social media services allow you to configure your account to receive email notifications if someone posts a comment, a direct message, a Facebook Wall post, or a tweet to your account. This allows you to only monitor one account – your email – which can easily be done with a smartphone. You can also configure mobile apps to alert you through your phone when someone has posted a message to your accounts. WordPress and all of the major social media services provide first-party smartphone apps for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile devices, and if a first-party app is not available for other devices such as Windows Phone and Blackberry, many developers have created third-party apps that provide the same notification services.
Know When To Take A Discussion Offline
In addition to answering comments, posts and messages in a timely manner, it is important that you understand the limitations of responding to a reader or follower through blog comments or social media, especially if you are dealing with a question or complaint. Always remember to act professionally when formulating a response – even if the message has angered you, or if you feel you’ve developed a casual social media persona, responding in kind can be absolutely disastrous for your business. Even if the message is friendly in tone, it is sometimes difficult to adequately respond within the correct format if your response is lengthy. Therefore, if it is difficult to respond to a comment, post or message for whatever reason, offer to move the conversation to email or a phone call.