Humanising Your Brand Through Social Media
Our 5 Top Tips
There’s a good chance you already know that you need to find the best ways to connect with your customers to see success, it’s pretty obvious that without customers you wouldn’t have a business right!
But do we truly understand the best ways to connect with them?
Well simply put, the best way to connect with them is face-to-face right? A human connection.
When a human invests in a product or service they want to know that they can trust in the brand. And the best way to do this is definitely still through personal connection. A human face! A strategy that we’ve all seen adopted by some of the biggest brands around. No matter what industry you’re in or how big your company is, connecting with your audience on a human level will help you increase engagement and boost conversions.
But how do we do this in 2019? The landscape has entirely changed. No longer are your customers finding you by walking the streets or picking up the local directory and calling you from a landline.
The days of a straightforward customer journey are long behind us. As devices and shopping channels have proliferated, the customer journey has become less predictable. The result is that selling is increasingly about outpacing the competition in terms of exceptional customer service!
With the internet at our fingertips, consumer’s have the ability to research and compare solutions like no generation before. They also have access to mountains of user generated content like peer reviews – which are trusted nearly as much as referrals.
So how can you humanise your brand and maintain an exceptional customer experience across the multiple touch points and various channels?
Our answer - social media!
Social media, when used correctly and for the greater good, is a very powerful tool for providing a human connection to your brand. We no longer have a choice whether to adopt social media or not. The choice is how well we do it!
Here are 5 ways you can humanise your brand through social media:
Let your customers see you - Using Instagram Stories & Lives, Facebook Stories & Lives, Youtube allows your audience to SEE YOU! These are all extremely powerful ways to connect with your audience. It may seem daunting to some and does require practice, experience and confidence. So if you have the option, a spokesperson who is polished, articulate and well-trained is the best option.
Be there for your customers - Use social media to talk ‘to’ your customers rather than ‘at’ them. Ask questions, encourage them to communicate with you and be there to communicate back with them. You don’t have a choice in whether customers will search for you on social media and if you aren’t communicating with them in this space they will consider it as a break in the communication which can cause friction in the path to purchase.
Show them you care - Use social media to show the world what you stand for, what your values are. Create social media policies that you can use if there is a complaint. And remember that a complaint is not scary! Being there to confront the complaint on social media is better than the person bad mouthing your business to 5 potential customers. By simply owning up to the issue and offering them something in return you can easily turn a complaint customer into a loyal brand advocate.
Make them remember you - Social media is a space where you can share interactive content, ask questions, use video, educate them, entertain them so that when they are searching for a product or service you will remain front of mind.
Show them you are professionals - No longer are people convinced with “word of mouth”. After they are referred 9 times out of 10 they will still check your online reviews, your social media accounts, your website and then they will decide to inquire. Build your online reviews on Google My Business and Facebook. Add them as a step to the sales process or customer journey.
And if you are feeling completely overwhelmed with where to start, just remember that while business owners will continue to wear many hats, the digital landscape is simply to hard for business owners to manage on their own without knowledge and experience, so consider reaching out to professionals, (like us!) who can help keep your business flourishing for years to come!
