What if one shift in your social media strategy could build trust with your prospective customers, help to mitigate or even reverse negative sentiment – and facilitate sales? What if that same focus helped to differentiate your brand from your competition? An effective community management strategy is the third leg of a balanced social media stool, along with a smart approach to content creation and advertising. Skillful management of those online conversations can drive real business results for you.
Conversely, we’ve all seen the obvious fails, when a community manager acting as the voice of the brand missteps. Mismanagement can quickly erode brand trust, lose customers and even spiral into a viral feeding frenzy. A thoughtful and intentional strategy can provide a foundation for making the most of the two-way conversations that are possible in the social media space.
Be a Human
Authenticity matters. From writing captions to responding to comments and messages, every brand-to-consumer touch point counts. It’s important for your audience to feel like there is a person on the other side of the account who has their best interest at heart. Human, yes. But also, let the brand’s personality come through in a way that is familiar and consistent with the way they will experience your brand onsite, on the phone or elsewhere. Each interaction either hurts or helps brand perception, and consistent, respectful, transparent communication builds trust, which is essential to your brand reputation and ultimately, to earning sales.
Watch, Listen and Learn
Social media is a 24/7 space. Make sure you have one or several team members dedicated to monitoring comments and messages — and appropriately responding to them in a timely manner. Try to keep your response time within an hour or two ideally, but at least within the same day. Pay attention and you’ll identify trends and current topics that can inform your content or even product-related strategies. No one knows your product quite like your customer, so be attentive to what they’re saying about you online, and learn more about what matters to them. The real-time insights can be invaluable, especially in quickly changing environments.
Collaborate With Your Team
Online conversations don’t need to stay online. Can you facilitate a handoff to the sales team, customer service or someone else on the team who can manage next steps? Social media is often the first place that people reach out, and that first brand impression is everything. Helping them to navigate your processes, find your location or get questions answered provides real value and grows loyalty.
Take the time to nurture relationships with those who show a genuine interest in the brand. Whether they become customers or brand enthusiasts, developing a community of raving fans is good for your business — online and off.
Have a Social Media Crisis Plan
Even the most reputable brands occasionally get a negative comment from a disgruntled customer. Having a social media crisis management plan in place allows you to pump the brakes on a crisis before it escalates. Have a list of key stakeholders who need to be looped in, along with their contact information so that you can get a hold of them quickly. To avoid debating too long on how to handle things, have a spreadsheet of customizable responses and action plans for different scenarios at hand to make the process even smoother, and to allow the team to act swiftly and in a united voice across all entity communications.
Pro tip: Move the conversation offline as quickly as possible by getting the customer’s contact information to reach out to them directly, to work together on a resolution. Social media moves fast, but having a well-considered crisis plan in place positions your team to respond quickly and skillfully.
Effective community management is critical to the success of your social media marketing strategy. If a marketing partner that can help you elevate your community management approach would be valuable to you, connect with Barbara at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 479-9834.
