Imagine with me: you own a pizza shop and have followed all the steps to be present on social media. He created a Facebook page, defined his strategy, and published frequently.
However, one day, a customer had a bad experience with a pizza he bought at your company. Then he finds your Facebook page and does negative reviews about your pizzeria and several negative comments on your posts. What do you do? I hope you don’t choose to leave the customer unresponsive or, even worse, delete the comments they’ve made on your page. Do you know why? If you delete it, he’ll notice it snowballs, causing him to come back and make even more comments.
If you don’t respond, everyone who looks for your company will be faced with bad reviews and will automatically eliminate your pizzeria from the possibilities for leisure and food. So, from the experience we have in managing social networks here at RD with this type of situation, I recommend that you evaluate each case as unique, investigate deeply to find out what happened, and don’t give ready answers when it happens.
It is essential, yes, to answer. Still, it is even more important to give an adequate answer which offers a solution to the customer’s problem and not just a justification that often blames the customer. It is essential to have empathy for the person you are interacting with.
So keep this in mind: social media can make a company known quickly and bring great results, but it also has the power to destroy it even faster. So, be careful when assuming the responsibility of being present in this channel.
What Kind Of Interactions Should I Respond To?
Here at RD, we try to interact in every way possible with our followers. For example, many people come to us to talk about various subjects in Facebook messages, from general questions about Digital Marketing, commercial contact requests, partnership proposals, feedback, suggestions, etc.
We see this as an incredible communication channel: we can chat quickly and informally with our customers, potential customers, and fans of the brand. Yes, we respond to or interact with every message we receive on our Facebook page.
Of course, this investment is significant: we need an available person who dedicates a good part of their time to paying attention to these people. But believe me, the return that this brings can be precious for your company.
In addition to messages, we interact directly with our publications, liking all comments and responding to most of them and publications made by visitors directly on our page and reviews, whether positive or negative.
In the end, what matters is that our followers feel welcomed and taken care of, and for that, we do our best to serve everyone and try to help them with any problems or questions they have.
What Is Social Media Monitoring?
Another topic within the interaction with your audience is monitoring social networks. It consists of doing keyword searches that relate to your business, such as the name of your company or the sector in which you operate, to find publications you have not been directly tagged and that deserve special attention.
For example, imagine that some outlet reported our main event on their website, the RD Summit, and didn’t tag our company by referencing it with a link to our website.
Searching for the keyword “rid summit,” we could find this news and contact the website to insert a link to our website. This research also helps in crisis management cases and identifies possible flaws in the service offered and how the company has communicated.
In addition, through monitoring, we can take advantage of trends, understand what the public wants to consume, and generate more relevant content (and more Leads!). Remember: social media management also analyzes content outside your social channels.
How Should I Communicate With My Audience?
It can be challenging to define what type of communication you will be with your audience. For example, it’s fantastic to see how Unban communicates with its followers in an informal and fun way, using GIFs and funny images. And I think I can say that everyone agrees that this brings a positive result for the company and that more and more people are fans of the brand, right?
However, for some companies, this style of social media management may not make much sense. For example, if your company has a more formal profile internally and more traditional communication with your customers, using this informal and funny communication on social media can give the impression that you are not yourself, do you agree?
Therefore, when defining how to communicate and which words/expressions you will use, it is essential to go back and remember who your target audience is, that is, who you are talking to. Indeed the communication you will use with the company’s director will be different from the one you will use with a university student. Combined?
How Do I Analyze My Results?
After doing all this, you can only measure whether your company’s social media management is being done well or not by analyzing your results. It would help if you defined which metrics are essential within your strategy.
For example, as I mentioned, our main objective is the generation of Leads. Consequently, our primary metric is the number of Leads generated via social media in a period, which can be broken down by social network and publication.