Social media is an incredible tool for connecting people to each other, and to their favorite brands.
But before we even get into it, let’s define who are customers are.
Our pal Julian Goldie does a great job with this in his video ‘What Is Buyer Persona And Why Do You Need It For Your Website?’
Video by SEO link builder Julian Goldie .
With so many mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram and even Pinterest, the potential for connecting with your audience grows by the day.
And, of course, making this connection is far easier said than done.
That’s why today we’re going to look at 3 ways you connect better with your audience on social media.
Once you have this connection established and your timing is perfected, you’ll find that their brand loyalty and their willingness to support your business will grow exponentially.
3 Ways to Better Connect With Your Customers on Social Media
Social media is a perfect conduit to bring people to your website. While it’s important to create engagement and drive leads, you should first ensure that your website is ready to receive this influx of visitors. The tutorials at OnBlastBlog can help you design a site that welcomes visitors from social media with open arms.
Once you have both your website and your social media established, you’re ready to start making these all-important connections. Here’s how to get started:
1. Make it Personal
Perhaps the largest obstacle that social media has to overcome, is a lack of that personal touch. When you’re communicating online, it’s all very detached. You typically don’t have a face-to-face conversations, and as a result you don’t establish that personal connection that is crucial to building trust and loyalty with your customers.
While it doesn’t come naturally to social media, personalization options do exist in certain forms. It’s important that you endeavor to make each interaction special in some way, shape, or form. Depending on your platform of choice, there are several ways to do this:
- Real-Time Responses: social media platforms offer you the opportunity to handle questions and customer concerns in real-time. This is something that many other forms of online communication cannot offer.
- Address Problems and Needs: You have a unique opportunity on today’s platforms to glimpse into the typical issues that your audience faces. This is important, because connections are most easily made when you can offer a solution to their problems. Preferably, your product or service represents that solution.
- Make it About Them: Too many online businesses make their social media pages about themselves, but that’s not the right approach. If you want to create connections, you need to make it about your customers. How do you address their needs? What value can you offer them? Listen more than you speak, and you’ll have the basis for a great relationship with your customers.
2. Choose The Right Content
The next step in building connections, is creating the content your audience wants to see. Let’s take a look at some steps you can take to establish the answers to your question about what to post on your social media pages:
Step One: Understand Your Customers
While things like images and videos are always going to be great options on social media, it’s also important to find out exactly what your audience wants from your content. This is where listening comes into play. It’s important to explore your competition and your audience on platforms like Facebook and Twitter to see what they are engaging with.
You should also take into account demographic information, which will help you understand their lifestyles. Use all of this to build what are known as “buyer personas” that embody your typical customer.
Step Two: Curate and Create
It’s not possible to continuously pump out quality content, which is why content curation is so important. Social media is all about sharing, so join in the fun! If you find something another person or company in your industry posted that could be useful to your followers, share it on your page.
Mix together your own content with valuable content that you’ve curated for maximum effect. You’ll find that your audience connects with you more when you consistently deliver top-notch content for them.
3. Tell Your Story
Storytelling is a powerful tool for brands on social media. While people may recognize a logo or a product, they won’t truly connect with your brand until they know the story behind it. Additionally, a great story can help customers place themselves into the narrative and envision how your product is going to improve their lives.
Knowing this, here are some excellent tips for telling your brand’s story:
- Give you brand a face by posting pictures of your employees or executives in candid situations
- Set milestones in your Facebook timeline that showcase your company’s history and major accomplishments
- Find a voice that matches the culture and feel of your brand. Keep this voice consistent across all of your profiles
- Tell stories that your customers can place themselves into. Make them the star of the show
- Reinforce your messages by curating and sharing content from others that matches your brand’s voice and ethics.
- Tell your stories through multiple types of content like written posts, videos, images, live streams, etc.
Telling a story elevates your content above the usual promotional affair, and offers a more personable approach for your audience, which will make it far easier for them to connect with you.
Final Thoughts
Connecting with your audience on social media is a crucial step in building a successful brand and business. With these strategies in mind, you’ll be able to take those first steps and forge that all-important bond with your customers.
How do you connect with your audience? Let us know in the comments!
Guest post by Rion Furstenburg. Rion is an accomplished social media manager who enjoy helping businesses realize their potential on today’s top platforms.