According to Hootsuite research, 82% of companies agree that social media plays an important role in creating long-term digital connections. Social Media is an important channel for delivering a great customer experience, but only 58% of companies have a clear strategy. This raises the question: Are marketers missing the boat when it comes to social?
platforms define so much of the social experience: The TikTok experience is very different from the YouTube and Twitter experience, but all platforms reach viewers, share important information, and build personal relationships between content creators and viewers. It serves an important purpose. When it comes to social, does the marketer’s practice of separating social media from traditional marketing channels ultimately break the connection?
The short answer is yes. While it’s wonderful that there are great social marketing management solutions available, it’s not always easy to tie those efforts to greater marketing strategies. Social comes with its challenges:
1. A very short window to capture attention.
2. The pressure to stay fresh and creative.
3. A typically noisy landscape where it’s hard for brands to breakthrough.
It’s also difficult to track and measure social media marketing and connect it to big-picture strategies and goals. Maintaining the momentum of fresh content can be difficult, but it’s important for brands to take the time to define their social personality in terms of brand identity. why? Firstly, it keeps the message consistent with the untapped audience, and secondly, marketers need to develop and communicate clear and thoughtful brand equity. If you can harness the power of social interaction to provide content that clicks the “follow”, “like”, “share”, and “add to cart” buttons (like Instagram’s shopping feature), build aggressively a customer experience with a collective purpose and the ability to span a variety of digital channels. Consider the following when strategically using social media to achieve your brand’s big goals:
• The customer experience should be consistent across all channels. In short, social media needs to work with all of the brand’s other digital properties to help you reach your customer experience goals across your organization. Brands often see social media as a one-way marketing channel rather than a two-way CX tool. By integrating social media data into a wider customer experience, companies can see customer behavior and engagement in real-time. It’s important that marketing, digital, customer support, and CX teams work together to develop a digital marketing strategy that enables them to contribute to larger business goals.
• It’s important to define measurement. Social marketing success isn’t all-around, but understanding social’s unique interaction framework and why people access social before visiting a website understands how social marketing works. It is the key to do. In my experience, customers use social media because they want immediate answers. In other words, I want to see and hear. For this reason, the best social CX strategies are often those that focus on personalized insights and quick response times. Nothing impairs the customer experience as slow or automated in answering difficult questions. To achieve this high degree of personalization, it is important to understand how your target market is using social channels. Do they use it as a source of education, customer service, communication, or just for shopping? Knowing why you use the platform is invaluable when developing an effective social media strategy.
• Once you understand why your target audience uses social media, you can start creating content that fits your target audience’s goals and interests. Without good content, a brand’s social channels are worthless. Social relies on speed and concise messages, the ability to quickly reach readers’ attention points and posts. Creating compelling, crisp content that links to deeper, longer-format materials in your organization is one of the most effective ways to encourage clients to engage with a wider range of brands.
• Two-way communication integration is important. Customers need to feel that their favorite brands are hearing and recognizing their voices, which helps with real-world communication. Foster consumer loyalty by letting consumers know that their concerns and opinions have been heard. This allows brands to better understand their customers’ ideas and further improve their digital experience.
As organizations strive for seamless, multichannel journeys, they should use social channels as a way to get customers to dive deeper into their brands’ content as part of the overall strategy. Make sure branded social channels have a consistent look and feel. Ensure the tone of voice and messaging are consistent, content is fresh, and you’re leveraging social for one-to-one engagement. Over time, this can help build consumer trust and create familiarity and meaningful connections.
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