Engage and Hook Your Customers in 3 Easy Steps

So how do you engage and hook your customers into your brand and business?

Well before we can truly answer that question effectively, we need to understand why customers engage.

To which there are two simple reasons…

1. They were made to feel special. They were made to feel the centre of attention and the most important customer in the world.

2. They received something of interest to them at the right time.

So, now we know why customers engage how can we capitalise on that? Well in a recent post, What’s more effective for eCommerce – Email or SMS Marketing? I talked about 3 rules you should follow when marketing to your customers.

Make it personal. Make it relevant. Make it on time.

And by following these simple rules you will be able to engage and hook your customers.

Making it personal
Marketing your business/brand in a personal way can be tricky, you want to get your message seen and read by all of your customers, but how can you do this in a personal way without breaking the bank or working double over time?

This is where mobile marketing can be the answer to all your prayers. The mobile phone is a personal device, so by texting your customers your message you are already a step ahead of content marketing or dropping an email into a customer’s spam folder.

However by using their first name in the text you will be to connect to your customers on a higher level of personalisation. Imagine getting a text message from your favourite brand addressed to you…

“Hi Jake – just to let you know we have the brand new range of Nike trainers in-store today that we think you will love! Drop in and see us or visit us online here www…..”

Making it relevant
Make the content relevant. For example as a male, am I really going to want to know about a new range of dresses being released? So segment your customers into separate contact groups.

Use your sales to influence your messages… For example, Jake has just bought a new pair of basketball trainers…

“Hi Jake – Just to let you know we have a great new selection of basketball clothing in-store, some great tops and shorts – drop in and see us or visit us online www…..”

Making it on time
So Jake is not going to want to know about all your great new basketball gear at 4 in the morning. Every customer is different, but look at what time of day most of your purchases are made and start to send messages in and around that time.

Record your results and see what works
As said earlier, every customer is different. However by testing different offers, different opening lines, and different times to send your message – you will soon learn and see what your average customer likes.

Don’t be put off by opt-outs and unsubscribes, you are always going to get them. The people who remain opted in are far more important and the ones you should concentrate on – so start engaging your customers!

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5 Ways to Incorporate Customers In Your Social Media Content Strategy

Let me play captain obvious for a minute: there are more people in the world than there are businesses.

Why bring this up? Because this basic fact represents the central social media challenge facing B2B marketers. Countless B2B businesses are trying to use social media to market their services to an audience that is often much smaller than that of B2C businesses. Most regular people can’t buy your product or use your service, so why would they follow you?

The key to success is involving your existing customers.

Businesses don’t just want to know what you do, they want to know what your clients think about what you do. Social media has increased transparency, and consequently increased the demand for this kind of client-focused content.

If you’re a B2B business looking to grow your following, there are a number of ways your customers can help. Have a look:

Case studies

This is what most people think of when they consider how to incorporate clients in their content strategies on social media. Case studies are a proven method of showcasing your product or service while highlighting one of your valued clients.

Case studies can be a great fit for social media since they implicitly draw in the networks of both companies. If you are lucky enough to have a brand like theWorld Wildlife Federation or Five Guys as a client, you can build a case study, promote it on social media, and have it be relevant to both your follower base and the wider base of your client. This is important for B2B companies since, as mentioned, they often don’t have the same kind of mass appeal of B2C brands, and struggle to attract individual followers on social media.

Once you’re comfortable in your relationship with a client, ask them if they’d consider doing a case study with you. When putting together this piece of content, always have social media in the back of your mind. Hone in on quotes that would make great Tweets, Facebook posts, or even text to layer onto images. Ask the client for photos and videos, or take your own, to ensure that you have these assets to accompany your social media posts. There might also be stats or figures within the study that would make great visual elements.

When you’re preparing to launch the case study, ensure that you coordinate with your client’s social media team. They’ll likely be eager to share a case study that shows them in a positive light, and a coordinated launch might help blow up the content right after it is released. Ask the client if they would share the study on their networks and even reply to any social media users who comment positively on the content. You would be surprised how appreciative regular social media users will be to simply receive a ‘thank you’ comment from a big brand.

Case studies are also usually evergreen, meaning they’re not tied to any event so date so you can use them on social media indefinitely. This is great for the slow days, and for times when you want to reinforce that customer relationship.

Testimonials

Testimonials are a very important part of any social media strategy, as they represent a very powerful and accessible form of social proof.

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon referring to people’s reliance on the feedback and actions of others to determine what is right and what is wrong in a given situation.It’s use in marketing is about as old as marketing itself.

In a 2013 study, 79% of consumers said they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations before making a buying decision. This statement alone should be enough incentive for small businesses and marketers to put more effort into leveraging social proof in their social media marketing.

The rise of social media has enhanced the importance of social proof because feedback from real people is more easily accessible than ever before. People are actively seeking it out more than ever, so you want to have that content to provide. So, much like with case studies, ask your supportive clients if they can provide you with a testimonial that can be shared on social media.

These social media testimonials can take on many forms. They can simply be a shareable quote from a client promoting your company, that you can then use on Twitter or Facebook, or they can be a bit more substantial. Examples of more involved campaigns include asking clients to Tweet or post about the value of your product to their business, and asking them to refer their own clients to your business where appropriate.

Remember: social media testimonials can be used far beyond social networks. Pull out any great client quotes from Twitter or Facebook and embed them in a blog post, add them to your website, or even use them on printed materials.

Content sharing or shout-outs

One of the easiest ways to throw a little love your client’s way is to simply share their content on social media. If you see them post something that may be relevant to your own following, or something they used your services for, simply retweet or re-share it to your own profiles. You give your client a boost in reach while highlighting your relationship with them. Plus, you fill a valuable slot in your content calendar.

On the other side of the fence, if you have a very strong relationship with a client, you may be able to ask them for their support in sharing your content. Often B2B businesses have overlapping relationships, where even if they provide different services they work in similar industries or in similar ways. If your content is relevant to one of your client’s social media following, there’s no harm in asking them to share it. Doing so can greatly expand your network.

Back-and-forth engagement

Beyond sharing content, actually engaging in back-and-forth dialogue with a client on social media can be an incredibly effective form of content. Brands are having conversations on Twitter with their followers and with each other, and users love it. There’s no reason B2B businesses can’t join in with their clients.

We took this approach on Star Wars Day (May the 4th) this past spring, Tweeting at several of our valued customers in a fun way. Many of them responded in turn, providing us with a source of social media content that our followers responded to.

While it’s great if this engagement happens naturally, consider connecting with a client’s social media team and planning out a conversation in advance. This could be as simple as coming up with some clever banter or a joke you can both benefit from, or as complicated as hosting a Twitter chat to highlight the client and share their insight. Find the formula that works for you.

Ask them for feedback

All of the examples above depend on you having a strong relationship with your clients. So what about the customers who are new, who have only sampled your service, or who you haven’t really built a hardened rapport with? These clients are equally valuable to your social media efforts, because they are a more accurate representation of the prospects you’re trying to attract.

The best way to make use of these clients is to ask them for feedback. If you see a customer post to social media about your service, especially if it’s something negative, reach out to them and ask them for feedback. Where appropriate this can be done publicly, to prove to others who are listening that you’re paying attention and that every client matters.

Don’t be afraid to poll your social media following. Ask them how you’re doing and what you could be doing better. Ask them what kind of content they’re interested in seeing, and then integrate it into your content plans. Once you do, reach out to them and share that content so that they know you really took their comments to heart.

Product releases or announcements provide another way to use clients for feedback. In advance of a release, reach out to a customer on social media and let them know it’s coming, and that you’d love for them to try it. You can even give trusted clients early access, making them feel valued. Then ask these clients for feedback. You can use positive feedback as content to help market the release on social media, and negative feedback to actually improve it.

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10 Ways To Continue A Conversation With Someone On Social Media

Social media is commonly used as a platform for marketers to promote their content and products. Millions of businesses use social media to communicate with their customers every day. These conversations are typically one-sided. Business accounts send out tweets but don’t bother responding to their customers.

Businesses and individuals need to have more conversations with their audiences. It is conversations that allow the strongest relationships to occur. You don’t get long-lasting friends that matter by having one-sided conversations with them. You need to have a conversation with someone if you want to build a strong relationship with that person.

However, the conversations that create friendships are more than the wave, the greeting, and then the departure. Conversations that build strong relationships need to last for a long period of time. In order to continue a conversation with someone on social media that turns into a strong relationship, follow these 10 tips.

#1: Wish Your Followers A Wonderful Week/Weekend

At the end of many of my conversations, I wish people a wonderful week or weekend depending on the day of the week. I do this for two reasons. The first reason is that I do want these people to enjoy their weeks and weekends. We have the right to enjoy our lives. The second reason is that this ending encourages the conversation to develop. Many of my followers also wish me a wonderful week/weekend depending on the day of the week.

#2: Ask A Question

Questions are great ways to continue a conversation. After one of my followers wishes me a wonderful week/weekend, I ask that followers what he/she has planned for the week/weekend. Many people respond telling me all of the things they have to do for the week/weekend. I follow up with a list of things I have to do as well. Asking this question allows me to learn what my followers do. If I find a pattern, I may create a product around that pattern.

On a simpler scale, you can start a conversation by asking what your followers’ favorite books are. Asking these types of questions to all of your followers will start up multiple conversations.

#3: Have Multiple Conversations With The Same Person

Just because a conversation ends does not mean you and the person you were talking to will never have another conversation together. You can talk to the same person again and again, just like a real-life friendship.

#4: Thank Your Followers For Sharing Your Content

One of the best ways to start a conversation is with an act of gratitude. I constantly thank the people who share my content with their audiences. I have thanked the same people multiple times. Many of the people who I thank either say something like, “You’re welcome,” or “Thank you for putting up the content so I could share it.” If you get one of these two responses, you should continue the conversation with that person.

Most marketers are so focused on sharing and creating content that they forget to thank the people who appreciate them. Some of the people who share your articles will feel so grateful that you thanked them that these people will continue sharing your content. When you do this, it is important to avoid abusing this power (don’t use this to manipulate your followers), and in the end, your followers will only share your content if it is valuable.

#5: Include Pictures In Your Posts

Social media posts with pictures have been proven to get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. If you include pictures in more of your posts, you will start more conversations with your followers. Some of the people who engage with your pictures will be people who have had conversations with you in the past. You can continue interacting with these people to strengthen the relationships and interact with other people for the first time to start new relationships.

#6: Only Talk To The Right People

Not every social media user is created equal. Ideally, you want to talk to the people who are interested in the content you share on your social networks. These are the people who would be more likely to share your content and be grateful for your insights. You want to build an audience of like-minded people so that, when the conversations do take place, you are talking to the right people. In addition, when you hop onto a conversation, make sure the people in that conversation are the right people to talk with (like-minded people who share an interest in your niche).

#7: Respond Quicker

You can’t have much of a conversation with someone else unless you respond. The longest conversations that take place are the ones where people quickly respond to each other. Most of these conversations are real human interaction without any technology involved. On social media, you need technology to communicate with your followers. However, you can make those conversations last longer by responding quicker as if you were in a real conversation.

I make it a policy to get back to my followers within a day. Depending on when the conversation starts and when I log in, I may get back to some people within a few seconds or close to 24 hours. By responding quicker, your followers will be more likely to remember the conversation when they see your response.

#8: Quiz Your Followers

Quizzing your followers is a great way to start more conversations. You can quiz your followers by giving them a clue to identify someone, something, or an event such as, “Who was the 33rd President of the United States?” The answer to that question is Harry S. Truman. Of course, some followers may choose to look that up, but you get more interaction.

The best quiz questions are the ones that require a guess. Think “How many pieces of candy are in the box” type of questions. You can offer a free prize to the first person who guesses the right answer or is the closest to the right answer.

#9: Poll

Polls are another way to start conversations. Facebook has an especially great feature that makes poll creation easier. For any social network though, you can simply list poll choices like this:

What should my next product be about?

A. Pinterest

B. Twitter

C. Facebook

D. Blogging

E. Productivity

In less than a minute, I just created a poll that could be put on any social network, including Twitter with its 140 character limit. This type of poll would allow me to know what products my followers want. Having this knowledge would allow me to make better decisions when I create my future products. You can ask any poll question such as, “Which social network do you like the most…” Not all of them have to be related to your products or expertise.

#10: Thoughtfully Contribute To The Conversation

When you contribute to a conversation, you need to thoughtfully contribute to that conversation. In human interaction, we don’t have as much time to think about what we say. We say what we think of. Sometimes, we say thoughtful things while at other times, we say things that we should have thought about before saying. On social media, you have time to think about what you say. Utilize the extra time to think before you post something on social media. Then, you will have a better reply to a conversation that makes the conversation build.

In Conclusion

Conversations are important on social media because they allow relationships to build. Some of these relationships may turn into sales, subscribers, and people who promote you for a long time. However, most conversations on social media are either one-sided or do not last for a long period of time. Everything you post is the start of a conversation. It is up to you to post the type of content your followers would be encouraged to engage with. Then it is up to you to keep those conversations going so you can build stronger relationships with your followers.

What are your thoughts on having conversations on social media? Do you have any other tips for making a conversation continue for a longer period of time? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

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How to Make Meaningful Connections With Customers on Facebook

Posting interesting content consistently on your brand’s Facebook Page is an essential part of engaging with your audience, but your efforts shouldn’t stop there. High-quality content inspires discussion, and you should be ready to respond to your followers when they leave a comment or question.

Monitoring conversations happening on Facebook will help you establish those meaningful connections that turn customers into brand advocates. Whether you’re answering a customer’s question posted on your Timeline or responding to a comment, these interactions are most effective when they happen in real time—and Hootsuite’s latest addition of Facebook updates help you do just that.

Here are a few ways you can engage with your audience in a timely manner by keeping tabs on your Facebook Page engagement, as well as Hootsuite’s newest feature for monitoring other Facebook Pages.

4 ways to engage your audience on Facebook

1. Monitor all incoming posts and messages

There are a number of ways customers can reach out to you on Facebook: a post to your Page, a private message, or a comment on your posts. To maximize the benefits of your brand’s presence on Facebook, you should keep an eye out for every possible point of contact.

In Hootsuite, you can now add My Posts as well as Posts to Page streams to stay on top of all your Page activity. This way, keeping track of posts to your Facebook Page helps you cut down response times when a customer or fan reaches out directly.

2. Keep track of the latest comments on your Page’s posts

After recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm, your business is likely investing more time into your content marketing strategy to increase reach. But your brand’s Facebook presence isn’t limited to curating and scheduling content—you also need to monitor interactions on that post, and respond to any questions. Since many people take to social media in search of customer service, you may see questions unrelated to the posted content. Take time to respond to these nonetheless: it’s important that your customers know their efforts to reach you are noticed.

However, even if the comment doesn’t contain a request for support, make an effort to connect with the person who left it. If you schedule your Facebook posts with Hootsuite, that should leave you plenty of time to connect with your audience in the comments.

In Hootsuite, you can add the Activity Stream to your dashboard in order to monitor all the incoming comments. This feature allows you to see all your recent comments, even if the original post is months old. This way, you can increase visibility of older content, and make sure you provide a response to every user who takes time to reach out on Facebook.

3. Manage comments on Unpublished posts

Unpublished posts on Facebook present a great opportunity to expand your existing audience on the network. These are posts created for advertising purposes and published outside of your Facebook Page; the “dark” or unpublished aspect stems from the fact that they don’t show up on your Page or Timeline.

However, since these are still public-facing assets, it’s important to have an efficient way of managing any conversations happening on an unpublished post. Businesses can currently do this by viewing their unpublished posts in Facebook’s Power Editor—which can be a lengthy multiple-step process. Save time and take advantage of the Unpublished Page Posts Stream, which makes it simple to see all the latest conversations in one place. Check in on your Unpublished Page Posts and find out how many times they have been shared, liked, or commented on, and easily respond to comments when they come up.

4. Make Facebook engagement a team effort

For businesses of any size, it can be difficult to give every user comment a timely response. However, short reaction times are the expectation in today’s market, and a recent survey found that nearly 30% of customers visit the company’s Facebook Page to voice concerns. Thus, it’s crucial that you work out a system that allows you to focus on conversations in a timely manner.

Hootsuite Assignments allows you to stay on top of conversations and tackle multiple interactions as a team. Users on the Pro and Enterprise plans can take advantage of Assignments to determine which team member is best suited to respond to comments on your Facebook Page. And now, you can zero in on the individual comments on your Facebook posts that need attention, and flag them to be resolved by one of your team members.

How to stay on top of other Facebook Pages

While monitoring the conversation on your Page is core to your Facebook engagement strategy, it’s also important to keep a pulse of what’s happening outside of your Page—whether that includes following competitor news, or viewing updates from your favourite brands, influencers, or publications. This could also spark new content ideas and allow you to repurpose emerging trends relevant to your industry.

Hootsuite’s newest Facebook Page Search feature makes it easy to follow and monitor other Facebook Pages. By adding a dedicated Facebook Page stream, you can view any Facebook Page’s public posts, and like or comment on them. And if you see content that resonates with your brand voice, you can bring that post to your team’s attention by assigning it in-stream.

Never miss a chance to engage with your customer—try these Facebook features out in the Hootsuite dashboard today.

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The Art of Making Customers Happy on Social Media

If you sell something online or if you run a business with an online presence—even if you’re just having a good time growing your personal brand—you’ll have the honor and the privilege of chatting directly with customers. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.

This always-on mentality is an amazing privilege, and at the same time it can provide some challenges for small businesses. How can you best respond when conversations are happening constantly? And what if they’re not all positive?

How do you manage to make customers happy on social media?

I discovered a few tips that might help out here, some strategies and insights that are backed by a fair bit of research. There’s an art to making customers happy on social media, and the good news: There’s also a recipe.

Here’s what’s involved.

The 5-part recipe for making customers happy on social media

These are the five parts I’ve encountered in my research on customer happiness. It’s interesting to note also that the order here is somewhat important: Listen before you respond, for instance.

1. Listen carefully

2. Respond quickly

3. Make a connection

4. Be specific

5. Say their name

1. Listen carefully

You focus on listening rather than responding

Among the 10 Buffer values, seldom is there crossover between the specific phrasing of a value and the naming of a social media marketing strategy. We’re grateful for the overlap with listening.

Social listening is the process of finding the meaningful conversations and insights from all your mentions on social media.

In particular, these elements from our Buffer value seem to really resonate when it comes to successful social listening.

You seek first to understand, then to be understood

You focus on listening rather than responding

I really love the way that Lolly Daskall outlines the importance of listening as it relates to business and leadership. I think her description rings true for social media as well.

We listen to learn.

We listen to stay informed.

We listen to understand.

We listen to gain information.

We listen to acquire knowledge.

We listen to obtain wisdom.

Listening carefully comes in a couple of phases:

1. Finding the conversations
2. Pausing to listen to what’s being said

In terms of finding the conversations, there was some really neat research done by Mention, who analyzed over one billion brand mentions tracked through their tool.

They found that 92 percent of people talking to brands have fewer than 500 followers. So you should listen for more than just big influencers.

They also saw that 30 percent of tweets containing company names don’t use the company’s twitter handle. So you should listen for multiple keywords and variations beyond just your username.

What this might look like in practice

There are a number of useful tools you can put together into a social listening dashboard.

Mention is one of our favorites, as it’s able to track just about any variation of you or your brand name, as well as keywords, phrases, and hashtags. One cool tip is to sync up Mention with Feedly to build a listening dashboard, alongside your RSS consumption.

Additionally, you can dive quite deep into Twitter using Twitter’s built-inAdvanced Search. You can drill down into specific accounts or hashtags or keywords, including going way back into the archives if needed.

What happens if you don’t

When conversations happen about your brand on social media, you have the chance to get involved and make a positive impression on those talking about you.

If you miss those opportunities, you miss the chance to make an impression. You miss the chance to provide answers or solutions or to steer the conversation in a meaningful direction.

And to go a step further, people might not think you listen or care. Brands that never respond not only fail to make a positive impression, they can sometimes make a poor one with their silence.

2. Respond quickly

Customers expect a response on Twitter within 60 minutes

Twitter is perhaps the most real-time of the major social networks, with the half-life ot tweets measured in minutes.

Consumers expect this rapidity to extend to their conversations with you, too.

Research by Lithium Technologies found that 53 percent of users who tweet at a brand expect a response within the hour. The percentage increases to 72 percent for those with a complaint. 

If you can pull of this quick feat (tips on this are below), you’ll go a long ways toward setting yourself apart. Few companies are able to answer so speedily.

A study done by Simply Measured found that nearly all brands—99% of them—are on Twitter and 30% have a dedicated customer service handle. Still, the average response time was 5.1 hours with only 1 out of 10 companies answering within an hour.

What this might look like in practice

Monitoring and listening with the tools mentioned above will be a great start for replying fast.

Additionally, tools like Must Be Present can help you track your response time on Twitter, or you can invest in software like Spark Central to stay on top of your customer support tweets.

If you’ve got a big team of support heroes, then a third-party tool like Spark Central is a great route to go.

If it’s just you, then you might look into the notification settings for your social network. For instance, with Twitter, you can sign up for Twitter email alerts and customize them so that you only receive the messages that you’d like—for instance, @-replies or new follows.

What happens if you don’t

Mark Granovetter in the American Journal of Sociology presented his social network theory that visualizes people as nodes. Those who are connected through a relationship are a single link away, while distant relationships are only a few links away.

Granovetter’s theory came out in 1973, well before the advent of social media (or the modern Internet, even), yet it still applies directly to the power of networking on Twitter, Facebook, and the rest. As a follow-up to Granovetter’s theory, a trio of UK researchers observed that most people are no more than six links away from any other person.

Put another way, word of a poor Twitter experience can spread far and fast. 

Jeremy Waite found that a tweet can spread from one person to 2.7 million within four generations—which is great for the amazing content you produce and share, and good to keep in mind for the conversations you have as well.

3. Make a connection

From a high level view, this strategy comes down to your perspective with social media.

It’s an honor and a privilege for someone to reach out to you on social media, amid the millions of other profiles and accounts to connect with.

When someone chooses to chat with you, be grateful, and respond.

Zappos, well known for its awesome customer service over the phone and online, has the following response numbers:

• Response Time:  < 20 min
• Response Rate: 100 percent

Yes, they reply to everyone!

In the book Traction, Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares talk about 19 traction channels to help gain more customers. One of these channels is unconventional PR, which includes customer service.

You can be so great at customer service that it becomes free, unconventional PR for your brand!

Consider: The average top brands worldwide tweet at least 12 times a day, and 54 percent of these brands are sending less than one @-reply per day.

There’s a lot of room to improve (and stand out) amid those numbers.

What this might look like in practice

When possible, connect 24/7 with your audience.

When not possible—and totally understandable if you’re a small business or a one-person team—communicate your availability.

Zappos does the 24/7 thing in a cool way by having their Twitter support team say hello and good-bye as they change shifts.

American Express gives us a good example of how to communicate when you turn off for the night.

Another way to make a one-to-one connection or conversation is through Direct Message.

Our co-founder Leo wrote a great article on Social Media Examiner about Twitter and customer service, and he laid out this quick 3-step guide for what to do when you’re communicating with your many people in your audience about a similar topic or bug.

Send one public tweet explaining the situation. Anyone who finds your Twitter profile will see that tweet first.

Then, reply to any @mentions with a DM. First, you won’t clutter your business’s Twitter stream with @replies for other customers looking for what is going on. Second, you can go into more detail explaining how you can help each customer.

Switch back to sending @replies if there is no acute problem anymore, but only regular questions and support requests.

DMs are also extremely useful when a simple @reply doesn’t give all of the information the customer needs.

DMs are also a great alternative to the “please send an email to name@company.com” line. You make a connection with your customer without sending them elsewhere to talk to you and dragging out the process unnecessarily.

What happens if you don’t

Not only do you risk alienating your community by not responding, you can also create harmful reactions to your brand. A research study in the Academy of Management found that companies who accepted responsibility for a problem saw favorable responses. Those who were slow in responding to complaints did not. It’s all a quite intuitive conclusion, though interesting to see backed by research in addition to intuition.

4. Be specific

This strategy is one borrowed from email marketing, where specificity—often seen in the form of segmentation and personalization—is a key driver of higher open rates and clickthrough rates.

A study by Jupiter Research found that relevant emails drove 18 times more revenue than general, broadcast emails.

Shane Snow and Jon YouShaei tested specificity in a series of cold emails, changing things like the subject line and the thank you message to see what worked best. Of the cold emails, sent in impersonal batches, only 1.7% of people replies, 12 out of 700.

Following the study, Shane cold emailed a single contact with a highly personalized email. He got a reply.

Here’s the email Shane sent:

Subject: Shook your hand at NextJump, would love your advice

Adam,

Fantastic presentation at NextJump yesterday! I was thrilled to shake your hand and say “thanks” right before you ran out. I was also happy to see your book hit the Print+Ebook bestseller list in the Times Book Review last week. The world needs this message.

I feel apprehensive asking you this, since I know you have plenty of opportunities to give already, but I wanted to know if, when the frenzy dissipates, you would be willing to coach me a bit on the work I’m doing for my first book? I just signed an exciting deal with HarperCollins (my editor, Hollis Heimbouch, works with Clayton Christensen and Jim Collins) for a book that I’m hoping will help a LOT of people. (It’s inspired, in fact, by XXXpersonal storyXXX.)

I’d love to tell you more about the book, which is provisionally titled Smartcuts, and pick your brain for one of my chapters. But most of all, I’d be delighted to get your advice on managing the whole process as well as you have. Perhaps we can grab a few minutes at your office or here in New York sometime?

Best wishes,

Shane

What this might look like in practice

Replying with specificity to your customers is a wonderfully smart and simple habit to get into. All it takes is a bit of notice.

When someone mentions you on Twitter, you can click on their username to see a popover with their bio and information.

What you might get from here:

• Location – “Hope the weather’s great in Boston!”
• Website – “Love the design on your site. :)”
• Favorite teams – “How’re the Red Sox doing?”
• School or alma mater – “Go ‘Cats!”
• Interests/passions – (attach a picture or gif)
• Work – “Hope all’s going great at CompanyX!”

From the above bio of Todd’s, I can tell with just a bit of Google searching and Twitter clicking that he’s based in Boston, he does content for a consulting company, he teaches at Bryant University (“Go Bulldogs!”), and he loves running and dogs.

What happens if you don’t

There aren’t too many downsides to an impersonal Twitter response. A response, any response, is better than none.

Personalization is what can help take your conversations from everyday to extraordinary. If you aim to delight your customers at every turn, then personalization in your social media replies is a great route to consider.

5. Say their name

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” ~ Dale Carnegie

A Ball State study found that addressing customers by their real name is considered a best practice of brands on social media.

And certainly, the psychology backs it up.

“You” or your name is considered to be one of the five most persuasive words in the English language.

Some of the biggest brands in the world rely on this personal touch with their interaction. In the book High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service, Micah Solomon shares an acronym used by Apple to help inform its customer conversations.

Apple takes the overall goal to … “Present a solution for the customer to take home today.” 

And they seek to achieve this with the following acronym:

A – Approach customers with a personalized, warm welcome

P – Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs

P – Present a solution for the customer to take home today

L – Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns

E – End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return

What this might look like in practice

In most cases, the customer’s first name will be easy enough to find on their profile. Twitter bios, for instance, allow for a username (the @-handle the person chooses) and for a first and last name.

Take a quick peek at the name before replying, and you can easily add it in to your tweet or comment.

What happens if you don’t

Like personalized messages, adding someone’s name is neither a deal-maker nor a deal-breaker. It’s just another nice touch. And all these nice touches could very well add up to something quite meaningful over time.

Over to you

What strategies have you found most helpful in replying to people on social media?

I’d love to learn any of your tips on the subject. Feel free to leave any thoughts at all here in the comments!

Image sources: UnSplash, Pablo, IconFinder, Mention

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