Social Media Is A Relationship Building Tool
Social media is an amazing invention that puts word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. It’s like having a coffee shop, community center, and bar all from the comfort of your home where you can talk to a wide variety of people about almost any topic you can think of. That’s why, at its heart, social media is a relationship building tool.
Building relationships online takes a little time and effort but the pay off is huge. Let’s look at some ways you can use social media to build relationships.
Be Authentic
No one likes to find out someone they admired lied. If you’re not running a six-figure business don’t try to tell others how to do it and don’t make people think you are. You will be found out. Instead, just be who you are, because that’s so much easier. You won’t ever have to feel fake or get nervous because you are who you are.
Understand Your Niche
Every single day keep studying your niche and your audience. Killer apps come along every single day and disrupt businesses all across the world. It can happen to you too if you’re not keeping your ear to the ground and paying attention to industry news. Consider how fast technology is changing in relation to your niche so you can stay ahead of the game. Plus, when you show a deep understanding you can better engage intelligently with your audience.
The Customer is Right
Most business owners hate hearing this but even when the customer is wrong, on social media the customer needs to be right. Do not fight with customers on social media. Even if they say hateful things cancel out all that and address only the issue at hand that you can fix for them. They likely told you how they want you to fix it, so now it’s up to you to do that, even if they’re really wrong because the optics of this type of situation on social media can spell the end of any business fast.
Create Brand Ambassadors
One way to make your customers rave about you is to rave about them. Share projects with them that aren’t complete, ask their advice. Use social media to communicate directly with your audience. Make them feel as if they’re part of your company because you listen to them so much that the products and services you create make some of your audience feel as if you’re reading their mind. You can even incentivize some of your customers by making them referral partners if you wish.
Follow Everyone Back
On some social networks, you have a choice of following people back who follow you or not. But, you should follow them back. The more people you have in your social networks the better. You never know who they’re connected to that might see something they “like” or share of yours so always when possible reciprocate. One exception is your personal Facebook Profile where you only get 5000 friends.
Building relationships with your audience can take some time. But, once you set up a process for succeeding with social media marketing to build traffic to your website, if you don’t skip the engagement portion of social media marketing you’re going to do fabulously.