In our digital world of today, it is imperative that you actively engage your customers and not just sitting on the side and observing.
Make sure you are available on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Promote and sell your brand on social media; it gives you a better edge than most businesses out there. When you are mentioned in a tweet, ensure you respond, like or retweet. That’s you engaging customers by making use of responsive customer service as well as answering any questions they need answers to.
Then again, social media is immense, and there are so many conversations that happen outside the major platforms without your knowledge.
One big challenge is that you may not be aware of the things being said about you and your service by customers if you are not mentioned in their tweet, but the public does. The reputation of a brand can be ruined very fast, whether it is a dissatisfied customer or somebody that needed help and didn’t get it on time. Thus, the best way to handle these indirect mentions is to get involved and not just watch and wait what happens.
It is erroneous to assume that most tweets by customers include a tagged mention of the business it concerns. Statistics have shown that only 3% of the 37% of tweets that were related to customer service used the @sign. This implies that looking out for tweets where your company is mentioned does not cover all the channels of communication, and there’s a very high probability of you not taking care of a crucial enquiry or complain. Indirect mentions are equally as important as direct mentions, and that’s where the search function on Twitter is very important and needs to be regularly used.
Making use of Twitter's search bar to take a quick look will reveal the things your business has been missing out on. It will show you precise matches, to your business name being misspelt, making it easy to be on attentive mode for many indirect mentions of your brand. You can still go further and just filter data using locations, language and keywords that are related to your business. That way, when customers make tweets related to your business, even if they do not mention your brand name, you are still able to grab hold of nearly all problems.
Social media – facts you need to be aware
Are you aware that more than 90% of brand mentions that are not tagged remain unanswered? Whenever a customer needs a response from you, the best thing is to contact them. However, the main people to get in touch with are those who are not making use of your Twitter. Irrespective of whether they deliberately chose to omit the @, or they just didn't remember, those customers said something (positive or negative) and that must be acted upon.
Negative Reviews and Posts in Social Media
More often than not, when you’re contacted by a customer via Twitter, it’s usually not good news. From having problems with the product, or delayed delivery or with a customer service agent, the options are limitless. Should the customer fail to mention your business, and it’s put out there in the social media world, it can go viral, and it would be already too late for you to do something about it.
Lots of businesses that are really big have been victims of these indirect mentions and lost out on opportunities to critically engage customers who might have totally altered their views.
Ignoring a negative tweet is the most horrible thing you can ever do. You must say something regardless of whether what you say fixes or worsens the situation. You may probably upset the customer the more, and possibly tweet about your absence of a response, and that’s not the publicity any business needs and wants.
To remain a step ahead of these bad indirect mentions, it is imperative that you closely monitor keywords about your brand.
Positive Posts and Publications
Indirect mentions are not entirely negative all the time. Actually, several folks tweet businesses with happy stories and positive feedback, but just don’t follow the business or did not remember to tag. There’s no business that does not wish to celebrate its success; it could be as little as pleasing a customer by delivering their products in good time or your staff member doing more than what's expected. In a world where there are numerous complaints, it is important that joyful moments are made public.
Opportunity to Make New Customers
Observing pertinent hash tags and keywords are also excellent ways to form new relationships with users that are not yet customers. Companies have a higher probability of increasing their customer base if they connect with tweets that aren’t related to their business.
It’s very simple to interrelate with any inquiries that are directly associated with your business via social media. Indeed numerous businesses still do! However, brand awareness is broader than responding to direct mentions, and you must respond to any tweet that concerns you, whether it is a tagged or your brand name being wrongly spelt.
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