Creating a Social Voice
Social media is one of the most effective means of promotion and customer engagement for companies. Utilized as customer service opportunities or simply as a means of creating an active community of followers interested in your company (the latter opportunity is the ultimate goal) social media provides countless opportunities for companies to engage with their consumers. Whatever the aim of your social media profile, you should ensure that the way you engage with customers reflects your company values.
Communication on social media is generally informal, for both personal and business exchanges. Even though you might deal in a serious industry, such as insurance or banking, your interactions with customers shouldn’t be too formal. Often, a chatty and relaxed manner encourages the best responses from customers.
If you want to maintain a level of formality about your interactions you can still set out some guidelines for your social media communicators, such as not including emoticons within messages. If your brand is more relaxed, encourage your communicators to take this tone with their customers. They could include emoticons in their responses or anecdotes about their own personal experiences.
Of course, a certain level of professionalism must still prevail when communicating on social platforms so be sure to establish what areas are and are not appropriate to talk about with, with customers.
One of the main mistakes companies make when starting on Facebook and Twitter is responding to customer service issues with the company name. Online communication is often such a faceless interaction so it’s important to personalise your responses. Encourage communicators to sign off their interactions with their name. This simple step will make a large difference to your customer service. If you personalise your responses to customers not only will it help them to feel like they’re talking to a person instead of a machine but also a person who has a vested interest in their concerns.
Creating a ‘voice’ for your company’s social media interactions is often overlooked in establishing a social presence, however it is one of the most important factors to consider when engaging with customers. Social media executives should work closely together with your company’s branding team (or CEO) to create a ‘voice’ to be used on social media. This is especially important if you have a large team managing your social media platforms as it is important that each respondent on the site engages with the same tone and level of formality.
Social media is a fantastic tool to help you communication with your consumers in an engaging and informal arena. Establishing a voice will help you to build a strong social platform and help your brand stand out from the rapidly increasing crowd!
Written by AO‘s Sarah Murray.
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