Tag: Building Customer Relationships

#ShareYourMessage – What is Relationship Marketing in Social Media?

Relationship marketing is all about creating and maintaining engagement with your customers. If social media is an essential element of your marketing strategy, then that probably sounds familiar since that’s precisely the same thing that success on social media means—engagement.

Both relationship marketing and social media are about the long game, creating strong connections to you, your company, and your brand so that customers think of you first when the type of product or service you offer is needed. Not only are you top of mind, but you are also trusted so that your customers become your advocates. That means referrals, positive reviews, and new leads.

If that sounds good to you, then you need to start thinking about your social media strategy with relationships in mind. But how? Here are five sure-fire ways to use social media as part of your relationship marketing strategy.

Speak the Same Language As Your Customers

When you interact with your social media community, you want to be a human, not a corporation. That means you need to relate like a person, not a bot.

Encourage (or ASK) Your Customers To Provide Feedback Via Your Social Media Pages 

There is nothing wrong with asking for a review or a comment. Once you ask, be prepared to respond regardless of whether the feedback is positive or negative.

Think Fast And Respond Quickly  

You should not only be accessible, but you should be timely. That means reacting right away, not a week from now. Remember, you are working to establish a relationship and relationships require give and take.

Show Your Gratitude

Social media is a great place to say “Thank you!” and to tell your customers how much you appreciate them. Whether that’s by simply saying it or by offering a gift or discount to your best customers, depends on your goals. Regardless of how you choose to do it, let your customers know what they do to contribute to your success.

Be A Village

It’s not enough to have good one-on-one relationships with your customers. You need to build a community. Whether it’s a select group just for customers, sponsoring local get-togethers, or establishing a special online place for conversation, your goal is to connect with your customers and help them connect with each other.

There are many great reasons to establish strong relationships with your customers. It’s easy to think of the business reasons — more sales, better referrals, more repeat business. But there are also reasons for you personally, particularly for small business where you are likely to interact with your customers personally. Happy customers can mean higher job satisfaction, healthy interaction, and less stress. So what are you waiting for? Get started on your relationship marketing strategy now.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Social Media Relationship Lifecycle – Like, Know and Trust

When we speak at training seminars, we talk about the “Like, Know, Trust” relationships that are built in social media.  Painting the picture for you, here is an example of a “courting” (yes, dated my self) relationship in reference to the lifecylce of a social media relationship.


Imagine if you will, a man (or woman) standing across the room, looking at someone they find interesting. They make the move to let that person know that they are “interested” in them by letting them know that they “like” them (ie in social media world, “Liking, Circling or Fanning their pages”)

They will watch this person (or Page) for a while, determining if they have similar interests, topics of conversations, or anything in common.  

Said “courter” may eventually “like” or “+” a few posts from time to time, letting that Page (or Profile) of the interest and agreement in their share.  Eventually, they will begin to engage with each other by sharing in discussions, dialog of variety and start to become more familiar with each other (in more of a “public” setting – ie notifications on their wall).  By engaging in likes, comments and polls, the entities are learning how to communicate better with each other, how responsive the one is to the other, and their “network” may start seeing these interactions.

Eventually, the “courter” shares a post made by the Page or Profile which introduced their entire “friends and family” network to their relationship.  The conversation went from Like to Know to Trust.  Their “engagement” became “Facebook Official” by the simple click of a share button.

Gathering this type of engagement is curated in simple ways:

  1. Ask your tribe (your trusted network of connections that have committed to share, engage and like your posts – as you have committed to them in return)
  2. Engage often by enabling tools in the platform to receive notifications when people like, comment or share
  3. Share information for your audience to get to know you, want to engage with you and share with their “friends and family”

Do you struggle with engagement or are wanting to develop content and engagement strategies? Let us know how we can be accountability partners for you in social media!

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 

Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “Be Awesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them. Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

3 Tips on the Best Ways to Build Your LinkedIn Network

https://thesocialmediaadvisor.com

Have you ever found yourself asking this question?  “I receive connection requests on LinkedIn and I don’t know what to do with them …”

There are many strategies available to you for building a successful business using LinkedIn.  Let’s start with the Top 3 basics:

The purpose of a Social Network is to first (1) BE SOCIAL and second (3) NETWORK

Be bold with your self in LinkedIn.  Define for yourself the types of individuals, industries and connections you would like to (and prefer not to connect to) on LinkedIn.  This could be as simple as defining a region, interest, company or profession that you are open to connect with.  This could also be as vast as determining states, countries and languages you are open to connect with.  Establish your boundaries and ACCEPT and CONNECT.

Some examples we use in connecting include:

  1. Individuals from countries that speak the same language – Unless your connection is obviously speaking the same language as you, you have a barrier from the beginning.  Set yourself up for success if this is something you would like to consider
  2. Individuals from industries of professions that could benefit your network – are they possible referral resources for you?
  3. Individuals who have similar interest – maybe you both enjoy golf or technology or the outdoors?  These would be great reasons to try to get to know someone in your network. Interests are also a great tools for sales calls and “breaking the ice”.

Taking networking to a HIGHER LEVEL

If you are like me, you probably attend a weekly or monthly networking event.  What do you do with those business cards you collected?

  1. Send them a connection request on LinkedIn
  2. Include a personal message reminding them how you met
  3. Follow-up with a message (upon acceptance) asking them three (3) key things to listen for so you can best refer them

Participate in Group DISCUSSIONS

You can not only join Professional Groups related to your industry, but groups of similar interest.  You can elect to receive notification of group discussions in your email or login to view activity.  Either way, Groups are a valuable asset of the LInkedIn Platform. (you can connect to up to 50 LinkedIn Groups and a myriad of subgroups)

  1. Connect to Groups of Professional Interest to your Industry
  2. Connect to Groups of Personal Interest to you
  3. Connect to Groups where your potential clients may be present

If you utilize these three (3) techniques, you will see that not only will your knowledge of exploring the tool increase, but your visibility, activity and credibility increase as well.

Your circle of influence is only as deep as the network you are swimming in!
Happy Connecting! 

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 


Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “Be Awesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Conent Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube, Pinterest and the tools to manage them. Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars

http://www.socialpowerprogram.com/


Curious on whether your social brand is built properly?  Get your Social Media Analysis today. 
 

http://www.thesocialmediaadvisor.com/Social_Media_Analysis.html

How Google+ is different from other Social Platforms

https://thesocialmediaadvisor.com/google_.html

One of the questions we are frequently asked, “How is Google+ different than other platforms?” The answer is simple but yet complex.  When you think of a social  media platform such as Google +, you should consider your target market.


First and foremost, is your target market present in the social media space you are looking to use?

Let’s consider Facebook … How many users use Facebook for personal use? We have found that various users utilize Facebook on a daily basis from CEOs of large corporations to people that take care of their loved ones on a day to day basis. Your audience is not only vast, but people use it for personal use which bleeds into professional use.  There are Executives to Home Makers that use this platform daily to get information about personal and professional uses, though the majority of users engage on a personal level.

Let’s consider LinkedIn … This platform is engineered to tailor to the people who use it primarily for business related connections.  You won’t generally see status updates of people sharing images of their children, their pets or their day to day happenings, but you will see interactions on professional activities such as events, industry related articles and company business.

Let’s consider Google+ …You will see a wide variety of users who conduct Professional and Personal interactions, This platform is the happy medium between the active Facebook and LinkedIn users.  Both types of activity are accepted in this platform and there is many reasons to do so.

Google+ has options for:
  1. Share, Comment and +1(which are your known likes in the other 2 platforms)
  2. Hangouts – which are you alternative for online group meetings (with limited numbers) for video and chat sharing conversations (with options of recording)
  3. Communities (or groups) for deeper conversation to build credibility and relationship with users in a more private setting.

Want to consider the best of both worlds? Are your clients present in Google+?  With over 4 million users, it is very possible.

Added benefit: Status updates posted to your Company Google+ profile are searchable in THE GOOGLE (as some say).  Can you pay for that type of visibility?  Not sure that FREE Google search results are options for you, but they are for me and I have enjoyed the traffic I have gotten from it.

Consider trying it on. But, build your profile with a lot of meat and plan to commit to consistent activity. You may find a deeper reach than you had planned for.

My 2 cents, for what it’s worth.

~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 

Hollie Clere


Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a social media manager, trainer and author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , Pinterest and the tools to manage them. Click here for her Social Media Links

http://www.socialpowerprogram.com/


Curious on whether your social brand is built properly?  Get your Social Media Analysis today. 
 

http://www.thesocialmediaadvisor.com/Social_Media_Analysis.html

  • 1
  • 2

Learn how to use social media to grow your business online with our video series!

  • Learn the fundamentals of social media
  • Learn how to build better brand engagement
  • Learn how to enhance your visitors' experience
  • Learn how to grow your business using social media strategies.

If you want someone to break down aspects of social media to get more clients and build your business using social media, this is the program for you.

Start Learning Today!

Follow me

Categories

Latest Articles

©2008-2023 Clere Communications / The Social Media Advisor