If you’re on social media for you business you should understand that you can’t use social media as a bullhorn for your own agenda.
Well, you can. But you shouldn’t.
People get turned off and they don’t come back. There are millions of choices of who they can interact with. There’s no reason that they need to stick around if all you’re doing is talking about yourself.
But interaction with your audience takes time, doesn’t it? And who has that nowadays?
It does take time but maybe not as much as you think. Here are a couple of quick ways to interact with people in just minutes a day.
5 Ways to Build a Relationship with Your Audience on Social Media
Follow your customers. Select a platform (or two) and follow your customers on them, even if they don’t follow you. Now you’ll be more apt to see what they’re talking about.
Make a customer list (and potential customers list, if you have a long sales cycle) on Twitter. This is the easiest way to make sure you don’t miss content. Every morning over coffee interact with a few of them. Share their content, comment on it, or favorite it.
Reach out to new followers. I hate auto messages but if you can craft one in a way that is appealing, it’s nice to make that immediate connection. Whatever you do don’t immediately ask something of your new followers. That’s like being introduced to someone and then asking them to borrow money. It’s just not the right stage. Instead, give them something or offer to do something for them.
Follow back. Don’t follow back bots or obvious spammers but for a normal account, if you’re trying to build a relationship you want to build bridges not walls (no, that’s not a political jab). Some people worry about having uneven follower and following numbers but if you’re talking about things that people are interested in, your follower numbers will increase. The other reason you want to do this is because you never know which of your followers is a potential customer. If you don’t follow them back, that may turn them off enough to look elsewhere.
Listen. If you have a few minutes before a meeting or lunch use that to run searches on social media. See what people are talking about and join the conversation. Twitter chats are excellent for this too. You can’t build relationships without “talking” on social.
You also need to respond. If people ask a question, get to it as soon as possible. If you’re not on social all the time, make sure your email notifications are in place so that the site will advise you when someone mentions you.
Interacting and building relationships is not so different on social media as it is in real life. But it is more convenient. You can interact with people in those few stolen moments between meetings or waiting for a client. Keep your smart phone handy and those conversations are only a fingertip away.
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