How to start with social media: be social

eMarketing Reflections

Part 3: How to start with Social media "Be social" October 2010
You made your plan, realized it online and are working on your promotion. Your first customers are starting to follow you. Now you need to make sure that you do not loose them again (a lost customer hardly ever returns) and that they are satisfied.

Start by throwing all your ideas about marketing overboard. Stop bombarding your customers with your brand and brand details. Stop acting at all. Just be silent and listen. We already decided that the social media space cannot be controlled, so stop trying.

Become social!
Now the way to be successful in the social media environment is to become social yourself. You need to interact with your customers. Like I said you start by listening, but then you need to react as well and make sure you wow your customer in the process. Whenever you have contact with a customer, they probably already know about your product, so do not mention that at all. Instead deliver a perfect service and satisfy the needs of your customer. Do not think “how can I get the biggest profit out of this moment?”, but think “how can I make sure this customer returns and starts talking positive about me?” When you reach that last result, that is when social media will truly start to work for you. Your customers will become your biggest promoters.

Do I interact with every customer?
Do you need to react to every customer who writes something about you? That would probably be too much. Start with your most faithful customers; those who react more than once or have said something positive about you already and spent 80% of your time with them. Then as your campaign (and probably your budget) grows bigger, you can start interacting with more customers.

Be social off-line as well
If you have a call centre or can be reached by phone, make sure that every customer who calls gets that same Wow! reaction again. Those people probably only call once in their life, so that is the moment to turn them into faithful fans of your products and ambassadors towards other online customers. Most companies handle a complaint by telephone as nuisance, but try to see it as an opportunity to gain another faithful follower.