Entries Tagged 'social media training' ↓

We all know it’s cheaper to retain customers than to get new ones, so why are so many companies still so hell bent of grabbing more new customers?

Maintaining relationships can be time consuming, but the returns can be impressive. Social media has opened up a whole new way of engaging with and adding value to customer relations, so isn’t it about time you harnessed that power to boost your income from your existing customers?

If you’re not sure how to go about this, take a look at this following aticle on SocialMediaExaminer.com. They give you 5 tips to help you gain more revenue from your existing customers using social media…

Are you using social media to keep your existing customers happy?

Do you want to figure out how to drive revenue from existing customers through the social channel?

This post will give you 5 tips to gain more revenue from your existing customers using social media.

Why Focus on Existing Customers?

For many companies, connecting with their existing customers is a natural fit for social media. These companies are seeing conversations about their brands, their competitors and their industry that provide them with an opportunity to engage others in dialogue.

There are two types of strategies that revolve around existing customers on the social media channel. The first is to offer customer service help through the social channel. …

For many new tweeters, that is probably the first question that springs to mind.

After setting up your account, you probably searched for friends, family and colleagues and then came to a grinding halt.

What happens next? How do you find new followers?

Let Twitter give you a helping hand

If you go to your Twitter page, you should see something like this:

At the top of the screen you can see #Discover, clicking on this brings up this screen. As you can see, it gives you the options ‘who to follow’ and ‘find friends’.

But what happens when people follow you?

Should you automatically follow them back?

The simple answer is no. Take control of your Twitter stream and follow only those people you want to follow.

Here are 5 very simple ways to make sure you get value out of your Twitter experience:

1. Say farewell to spam

When someone follows you, take a look at their tweets. Are they excessively promotional? If so, they are more than likely going to be a spammer. Unless you want your stream full of their plugs, don’t bother following them back.

2. What are they saying?

Someone’s Twitter feed will tell you a lot about them. Take a look at their past tweets – do you find them interesting? If so, follow them, if not, don’t bother.

3. OTT

Tweeters come in all shapes and sizes; some have a lot to say, others very little. If someone follows you who is a prolific tweeter think carefully before following them back. Do you really want them to be filling your Twitter stream 24/7?
If what they’re saying is interesting, go ahead and follow. But if you’re not so sure, it may be better to pass.

4. Silent night

Twitter is all about being social and that means interacting. If you’ve been trying to engage with a particular follower and they’ve just been ignoring you, you’re not really getting any value out of that relationship so it may be time to unfollow and find someone who’s a little chattier.

5. Bio and interests

The best way to find out a bit about your followers is through their biography. Personally, if there is no avatar (i.e. uploaded their own rather than using a generic one), or there is no bio (or a very poor one) I won’t follow back.

Your bio is where you can add details about you, your likes and dislikes. It’s the best way to work out whether you have something in common with your follower or not. If you do, you are far more likely to enjoy a great Twitter relationship.

At the end of the day, Twitter is about being social. It’s not about a band of silent stalkers that don’t interact with each other.
Choose who you follow carefully to make sure you get the most out of your experience. By following these 5 very simple ‘quality checks’, you’ll be able to ensure your Twitter followers will add value to your social media activities.

Sally Ormond – Copywriter and Tweeter

A (not so) quiet revolution in marketing has been taking place over the last few years.

Customers are showing they enjoy doing business with companies that have a strong social media presence. They enjoy buying from people they like, know and trust.

What’s the fastest way to generate relationships like those?

Through your Facebook presence.

With over 750 million active users, Facebook has become the place to be in business. In fact, customers are beginning to expect you to have a presence on this phenomenal social media platform.

Because of this, many business have set up pages but without the in depth knowledge they need to leverage them fully.

The Facebook Success Summit 2011

If you’re a regular here on Freelance Copywriter’s Blog, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Facebook is evolving into a one-stop resource for people’s communication needs with new features such as:

• Cleaner pages
• Users being given more control over their news feed
• Emails when someone comments on your page
• iFrame instead of static FBML
• The ability to offer deals to people checking in on mobile devices
• The ability to make Skype calls

It is becoming more and more important to master it if you want to fully utilise it for your business.

Therefore, SocialMediaExaminer have announced their forthcoming Facebook Success Summit 2011.

Due to start on 5^th October (running for the entire month) it will help you discover how to attract and engage quality customers with Facebook.  With help and advice from 19 Facebook pros, it is an essential summit for anyone serious about leveraging the power of Facebook for business.

For more information, check out this post on SocialMediaExaminer – Is Your Business Maximising Facebook?

There is a short video there to tell you a bit more about it.

The biggest mistake most people make with social media is that they treat it like an advertisement channel.

Once they have their accounts up and running they are like a mini marketing machine. Tweets and posts fly around with their latest offers or details of what they do.

But there are a few problems with that:

• People will get very bored of you very quickly
• You will be unfollowed left, right and centre
• You’re not adding value

Basically, you’ve missed the point of social media altogether.

Engagement is the name of the game – listening to others, asking questions and joining in the conversation.

Making the most of social engagement

There are a few easy ways you can make the most of your social media engagement that will help you enhance your relationships with your followers. As with most things in life, you only get out what you put in – so if you sit back and wait for others to come to you, you could be waiting an awfully long time.

1. Targeting your geographical area

You can enhance your local networking by searching for people in your own geographical area by using www.search.twitter.com . The advance search facility will also allow you to search for people tweeting about topics you’re interested in, hash tag discussions etc.

Using this facility you can tweet smarter by finding the people you want to engage with.

2. Questions

Asking questions (and answering them) is a great way to build interaction and engagement. Twitter is an amazing tool for finding information. If you have an IT problem, want to find a particular product, need some advice or a local supplier just send out a tweet and people will respond.

But don’t forget you must give as well as take. Be helpful and respond to other people if you want them to help you.

3. Fountain of knowledge

It’s unlikely you’ll be able to answer every question you see asked so set up searches for things you can help with. For example, I’ve set up searched for people with copywriting queries. Then when a question is asked, I get to see it and can respond.

So if you are a property lawyer you can set up searches related to property, if you’re a chiropractor you can set up searches for people looking for help with back complaints.

4. Don’t automate

There are a lot of people who automate their social media activities. You may think that’s a smart thing to do because it saves you time, but it’s not that smart.

Social media is about being social so automating your tweets could be like sending a video of yourself to a party rather than being there in person.  If someone sends you a tweet and you’re not there, how can you respond to it?

The only automated tweets I send are the ones that give links to my blogs because I have the blog RSS feed linked to Twitter. Everything else is me so I can be responsive to any tweets I receive.

After all if a customer rang you, would they rather get an answer phone or speak to you in person?

5. Patience

If you think that setting up a load of social media accounts is going to suddenly launch you into the social stratosphere, think again.

Building a following and getting to grips with social media isn’t going to happen instantly. It will take time and strategy.

Be patient, watch, participate and learn.

It’s very easy to be tempted to use social media as an advertising channel but if you do you’ll just hack off a load of people.

Social media is real life interaction – it just takes place online.

Think of it as virtual networking – if you walked into a room of strangers and tried to start selling to them you’d soon be given the cold shoulder. Networking, in all forms, is about listening, chatting, asking and answering questions and generally getting to know people.

Do that in a social media environment and you’ll start to engage and build relationships.

Gemma Thompson is a communicator and endlessly curious. Use of Facebook & Twitter led to excellent brand awareness for her start-up business a few years ago. In less than a year she had a substantial ROI – £4,083 of business for £950 hours spend, and was being asked to teach others how she was doing it! She is now a full time social media consultant.

The author’s views are entirely her own and may not reflect the views of FreelanceCopywritersBlog.com. If you are interested in producing a Guest Post for this blog, please get in touch with your ideas.

I hear so often that people are too busy to add social media into their business lives, and in fact I’ve felt the same way sometimes!

But social media is so much more than the sum of it’s parts, sure it’s great as a resource and fantastic as part of your marketing mix, but where social media really comes into it’s own is when it is recognised as being a channel for communication and used as such.

Danger Ahead!

The danger of being ‘too busy to tweet’ is that what that really means is that you are too busy to talk (and listen!) to your customers!

The times are not changing, they have changed. So many people use social media to interact with the business’s they buy from and they want to know that you value their custom. The easiest way to do this is to talk to them, listen to them, value their conversation and even enjoy it! Scandalous I know but then in my view business really should be fun!

But I do understand the demands on time, particularly if you are a small business or sole trader, of course you can’t put off doing the work your customers are paying you to do!

Phew – A Safe Passage!

However once your selected social media channels are set up and you know what your strategy is, social media doesn’t have to steal away every minute of your day. In fact I regularly recommend to my clients that they check in just three times a day, first thing in the morning, just before or after lunch and just before the end of the day. This pattern was strongly recommended to me when email became something that threatened to overwhelm the world and I find it holds true for social media too.

There are also many tools on the Market now that can help you fit it into your day efficiently, spending time with a social media strategist can help you define which of these will be right for you.

If you really can’t squeeze 30 minutes a day of social media use into your day then I’m afraid it is time to ask yourself what you are doing that could be changed, is it time to take on an accountant instead of slogging through your receipts yourself? Maybe hiring a virtual assistant to help with your filing or outsourcing your copywriting will help? It may be that you need to employ an additional staff member.

Whatever you need to do, do it. It’s vital you take the time to talk with your customers through social media, and it is most time efficient and effective when it is you that does it. Yes I offer social media management as part of my services, but it’s not what I recommend in the majority of cases. Nobody knows your business like you do, and nobody can change things as quickly as you when your customer base is telling you they need something else. So make that time, 30 minutes a day to communicate with your customers, because they’re worth it!