Edwin Schlosberg once said: The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. Social media community engagement? What does it mean to your business?
In the ever-changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media community engagement?
Here we define social media community engagement as the process of gaining customer website traffic, attention, and interaction with customers through social media sites.
Do you remember the last time you created an online relationship with a potential customer? We would love to hear the story. Please share it in the comments section below.
This task starts with what customers want and need. Most people want to: feel needed, be valued, be appreciated, be fulfilled, share emotions, laugh and be happy, succeed and be inspired.
Make them feel something that feels unique to what other brands are blasting at them. To do this, you must know who your community is. You must know how to catch and hold their attention.
So let’s examine our recommended game plan to build a positive social media community engagement:
Win the first impression battle
What are you doing to make their first 30 seconds on your platform useful and worth their attention? If you can’t answer this question, you need to start here. First impressions are everything.
You aren’t going to capture your community overnight or on the first day you launch any social media site. Building and launching an integrated online community takes time. Give yourself and your team the time to do it right.
Have patience and persistence. Slow down and do it right and at the end of the game, you’ll be the winner, guaranteed.
Social media community engagement … connect emotionally
Make them feel. If you want to grab my attention on G+, make me laugh. Make me cry. Make me feel something, anything. When I have a super busy day, and I am replying to posts, I have no choice due to the amount of them and time constraints but to choose where and when I am going to respond.
It is an easy choice for me. I respond to the people who grab my attention. The people who are nice, who make me feel good. The people who are genuine. The people who make me laugh, playing the emotional card.
Focus on relationships
The life of social media is people. People like you and me. People who laugh, cry, get mad, go crazy, get married, divorced, have kids, lose family members, win jobs, lose jobs, get promotions, win new clients, get new opportunities, have fun, play hard and work hard.
Offer value to the people in your community with a goal of building real relationships. Offer value and knowledge.
Inspire them
Inspire your communities to connect with you with a foundational goal of achieving their objectives. Inspire … Connect …Achieve. To do this, you must know their objectives and goals. You must know them. When you know your audience, then you can know how you can help them be better.
How can you help them learn? How can you help them go faster? Work smarter? Be smarter? Share more valuable information with their colleagues, clients, partners, and friends? Figure these answers out and use them to help.
Teach them
What knowledge can you share with them that will make them smarter? How can your knowledge drive real efficiency in their life or business? Share your best stuff, not just the same old, same old you wrote two years ago that is overused and oversold, by everyone everywhere.
Make it easy
People want to connect. They don’t want to be spammed at every opportunity. Give them an opportunity to engage with you, your brand, and your team. Be available. Open up your comment stream on your blog. Listen and be relevant and responsive.
The most important thing you can do to create a positive engagement is to listen carefully. Listen with a goal to understand. Bottom line, listen more than you talk. You’ll be amazed how much you can learn about your audience when you shut up and listen.
The bottom line
Facebook has a monthly audience of nearly a billion visitors. That’s a B as in billion. Other top sites, like Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, attract hundreds of millions. By now, nobody doubts the power of social platforms, although few marketers have been able to exploit them as fully as they desire.
As Harvard’s Mikołaj Piskorski makes clear in his new book, A Social Strategy, businesses have a long way to go before they truly begin to unlock the potential of the social web.
Most marketers, in fact, use social media much as they would ordinary media—to broadcast messages. We are still not working as hard as we can on engagement and building relationships.
And the real potential lies in building relationships and utilizing social platforms to create solutions for customers’ social problems.
While consumers are understandably skittish about corporations interjecting themselves their personal conversations, they appreciate the opportunity to meet and build relationships with others. And that, it turns out, this is an enormous opportunity.
That’s why it’s important to make the distinction between a digital strategy that involves social platforms and a true social strategy. For a social strategy to succeed, simply joining the conversation is not enough. You must lead it.
Being social with a great positive engagement isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business. Follow these simple tips and you will be leading the way.
Do you have an experience on your team’s positive engagement to share with this community?
Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on social media marketing and advertising from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Network Connection … 23 Actionable Tips for Relationships
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
Are you in tune with what your customers are shopping for and why? When was the last time you thought about influencing consumer behavior? Are you into changing minds, shaping opinions, and moving consumers to act? Perhaps in your marketing messages or in your customer engagement?
The ability to influence is one of the essential skills for all customer facing employees, isn’t it? It’s more art than science, and it can be tough to get your arms around. But the bottom line is that the ability to influence matters. And as we continue to morph (at breakneck speed) into an interconnected, interdependent, increasingly global workplace, it will matter more and more.
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for customer influence in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? It would be greatly appreciated by us and our community.
The ultimate goal of all the points I list below is this: eliminate the fluff from your marketing strategy, and focus only on the things that work.
To be an effective influencer, you need both substance and style. Without a solid foundation of credibility, even the most interpersonally adept leaders will fall short. On the flip side, highly credible people can struggle with influence if they don’t understand the interpersonal dynamics at play.
In 2009 and 2010, Discovery Learning, Inc. and Innovative Pathways conducted research to identify and measure influence styles. Their research derived created five categories:
Consumer behavior … asserting
Insist that your ideas are heard and you challenge the ideas of others
Put forward your ideas and offer logical, rational reasons to convince others of your point of view
Influencing consumer behavior … negotiating
Look for compromises and make concessions to reach outcomes that satisfy your greater interest
Bridging
Build relationships and connect with others through listening understanding and building coalitions
Inspiring
Advocate your position and encourage others with a sense of shared purpose and exciting possibilities
Each of these styles can be effective, depending upon the situation and people involved. A common mistake is to use a one-size-fits-all approach. Remember that influencing is highly situational.
Here are eleven ways to increase your influence skills:
Even if you already know what people are going to say, and even if there’s no way you can do what they want, start by listening. Being listened to is one of the things they want–that’s true of just about everyone. That was one mistake I made on my first project: I had listened to people who wanted to volunteer, but not to those who had volunteer jobs to offer. I assumed they’d be happy to have new volunteers, but I was wrong.
Consumer behaviour in economics.
Be curious and ask many questions
Not only because everyone wants to be listened to. Careful questioning will help you determine what people really want, which is often different from what they say they want. It will also tell you what they have to offer.
Network for more connections
Look for ways to connect that have nothing to do with the work at hand. Maybe they have children the same age as yours, or they live somewhere you’ve vacationed, or you share the same hobby. Even if none of that’s true, you can still make a bit of a connection on the basis of universal experiences. For instance, right now a large portion of the United States is suffering through extreme winter weather. That is always a good subject for sharing great stories, yes?
No worries
It’s always tough to know just how much of your personal life it’s OK to share in a business context. Let your guard down. Many people err on the side of caution by sharing little or nothing about themselves. Instead, decide what you feel comfortable having other people know, and then give them a few details. You’ll make other people feel safer and engage their human side.
Consumer behaviour models.
Show gratitude
Think hard about who’s helped you or put him- or herself out, and make sure to thank him or her. That makes it much likelier he or she will put him- or herself out again for you next time.
Show praise
Most of us never get enough praise for the things we work hard to do. So if you want to influence someone, make sure to call out what he or she has done well and how he or she has contributed to your organization or your well-being. Do it in public if you can.
Be good at apologies
If you hate apologizing, get over it. An apology is one of the most powerful tools you have for winning people to your side. If a decision you made caused someone inconvenience or upset, an apology lets him or her know that you care. That’s true even if you don’t regret the decision itself but only the harm it caused him or her.
(One word of caution: Don’t ever apologize, praise, or thank unless it’s sincerely how you feel. People can tell when you’re faking, and it will backfire.)
Strive to meet customer needs
Obviously, this isn’t always an option. But if you can figure out what people really want or need and make sure they get it, they’ll be that much more likely to give you what you need from them.
Consider an example ofInternet Privacy
Running a business today almost certainly means having a digital presence, and being connected to the Internet. While the benefits of this transformation are many, the security issues are still a daily challenge, with many solutions in the market place to address them.
Yes, internet service providers (ISPs) such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T are free to track all your browsing behavior and sell it to advertisers without consent. ISPs have access to literally all of your browsing behavior – they act as a gateway for all of your web visits, clicks, searches, app downloads and video streams.
This represents a huge treasure trove of personal data, including health concerns, shopping habits and porn preferences. ISPs want to use this data to deliver personalized advertising.
Check out this excellent VPN solution.
Allow people to save face
Sometimes you know that someone would be disastrously bad at a job he or she wants. Should you say so? Unless you’re giving him or her feedback with a view to his or her being qualified later on, don’t. You’re better off giving that person a more palatable out. For instance, you’ve already promised the job to someone else.
Talk person to person
Do you find yourself getting and making a lot fewer phone calls than you used to? With email, text, and social media, I do. But there are times when a phone call or face-to-face communication makes a big difference. One of those is if you have disappointing news to deliver. Another is if you are asking someone to take on a bigger role or added responsibility.
On the phone, you can answer any questions he or she has or listen to any venting he or she may need to do in real time. You’ve stepped away from your other duties to spend time with him or her. That lets him or her know you really care about whatever you’re calling for. It’s a powerful way to make him or her care, too.
Rational and logical presentation
Presenting the facts and laying out an argument is perhaps one of the most common and most accepted methods of influence in business. It generally includes emphasizing the positive benefits of a course of action.
This method is most often used upward, such as making the case for the feasibility of a certain initiative to your boss or proposing plan objectives to your Board or executives. The only problem is, people don’t act with logic all or even most of the time. So unfortunately this method does have its limits.
Key takeaways
Whether you are leading, following, and/or collaborating, chances are you need to influence others to be successful. Influence strategies can range from reliance on position to education, encouragement and collaboration. The key is knowing which approach to use in a given situation.
Need some help in building better customer insights from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer base?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job of growing customer insights and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed how reasonable we will be.
Check out these additional articles on customer service insights from our library:
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
A positive attitude is everything for customer
engagement and relationship building, isn’t it? Priceless.
The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a
thoughtful gesture.
Ken Langone
You perhaps have heard this very old
story illustrating the difference between positive thinking and negative
thinking:
Many
years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to
investigate and report back on market potential.
The
first salesman reported back, “There is no potential here – nobody wears
shoes.”
The
second salesman reported back, “There is massive potential here – nobody wears
shoes.”
This simple short story provides one of the best examples of how a single situation may be viewed in two quite different ways – negatively or positively.
There’s a passage in Ernest Hemingway’s 1925 novel, The Sun Also Rises, in which a character is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he answers. “Gradually, then suddenly.” The quote has since become emblematic of how a crisis takes shape. First with small signs you hardly notice and then with shocking impact.
We could explain this also in terms of
seeing a situation’s problems and disadvantages, instead of its opportunities
and benefits.
When telling this story its impact is increased by using exactly the same form of words (e.g., “nobody wears shoes”) in each salesman’s report. This emphasizes that two quite different interpretations are made of a single situation.
Here is another good example. Anthony Trollope was in the business of writing books and writing a book is a big project. It is not the type of task that you can complete in a day. In some cases, merely writing a chapter is too big a task for a single day. However, instead of measuring his progress based on the completion of chapters or books,
Trollope measured his progress in 15-minute increments. This approach allowed him to enjoy feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment very quickly while continuing to work on the large task of writing a book.
I have found this second point, the speed with which you complete your first task of the day, to be of particular importance for maintaining a highly productive output day after day.
If you are in a business where you deal with people on a regular basis, like we are, your motivation and attitude need to be in ‘top gear’ (as it will usually impact most issues of the day).
By spending 5-10 minute at the beginning of each workday reading and thinking of the items in the following simple checklist, we help our employees be the best they can be for the day’s activities:
Helping people
You can only
help people who want to be helped.
Become an optimist
People who think as an optimist see the world as a place packed with endless opportunities, especially in tougher times.
Respect
differences
Appreciate
and respect differences
in others.
Increase flow experiences
We define flow as a state in which it feels as if time is standing still. It occurs when you are so focused on what you are doing that you become one with the task. In this state, nothing competes for your attention.
Listen
Listen
before speaking and listen more than
you speak.
The most positive people we know are the ones who make friends easily and work to build deep, meaningful relationships.
Conserve
energy
Don’t waste
your energy on negative
people or situations. You can’t fix everything or everybody.
The
future
You can’t predict the future so why think that you can?
Practice acts of kindness
Selflessly helping someone is a super
powerful way to create a positive attitude.
Being
liked
Not everyone
you meet is
going to like you. Not something to worry about, is it?
Express gratitude
When you appreciate what you love, what you love appreciates in value. If you aren’t thankful for what you already have, you will have a hard time ever being positive.
Express gratitude.
Only
you
Only YOU
can control your destiny. Take
initiative on your own behalf.
Strangers
View strangers as friends in waiting. Seize these opportunities.
Savor life’s joys
Deep happiness cannot exist without
slowing down to soak up the positives all around you.
Be forgiving
Harboring a feeling of hate and meanness is horrible for your attitude and well-being.
Commit to your goals
Magical things start happening when we commit ourselves to do whatever it takes to achieve our objectives.
Avoid social comparisons
Comparing yourself to someone else can
be a poison to your positive thinking.
Develop coping strategies
It always helps to have healthy ways to cope with your arsenal.
Do you consider your company a social
commerce business? While there has been considerable hype about social commerce
in the last few years, we don’t consider it new … it has been around as long as
commerce. These days there are just more channels to engage customers and be
social. Positive thinking is everything in this regard.
Key takeaways
Remember, this is the time to create
remarkable experiences in order to create lasting relationships with customers.
Lead with initiative … own the moment. Remember
attitude is everything.
The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. By focusing on a positive daily attitude we are much more inclined to be the optimist and find the opportunity, aren’t we?
Being social with great positive thinking and attitude isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business.
What do you do to get yourself and
those around you in the right frame of reference for top performance?
Do you have experience with employees’ positive attitude to share with this community?
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight
gets better every day you learn and apply new insights that you have learned.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most
important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous
learning for yourself and your team?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer
service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that
relate to improving the performance of your business. Find him on Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Check
out these additional articles from our library:
