Authenticity: The Most Important Ingredient in the Social Media Recipe

Regular stories illustrate just how far off base big companies that claim to be experts on marketing are when it comes to their social media strategy. Traditional marketing techniques might have made it easy to be slick, making claims of being the newest, best, or highest value. Not so in the land of social media!

 

This is unknown territory for so many companies that believe they simply have to have a Facebook fan page, a blog, and a Twitter account and then can say whatever they want. Wrong! Social media is about interaction and, in order to engage and inspire the audience out there, you have to win their trust. And, that starts with authentic messages. Otherwise, the result of social media efforts will be lost credibility and a high level of scrutiny that will be difficult to recover from.

  

Building Trust through Authentic Messaging and Actions
Here are some ways to be authentic in all your social media messages:

• Attempt to solve customer issues without resorting to language where they quickly realize all you are doing is trying to sell them your product or service.
• Be quick to respond and offer answers to questions that appear on your social media channels from customers. It shows care and concern for their needs. Be sure to make your answers as relevant as possible rather than sympathy gestures.
• If a problem arises from a use of your product or service and a customer complains via social media, don’t ignore and hope it disappears – it’s social media so it’s there forever. Instead, respond immediately and make a proactive effort to resolve the problem. You may then find that the customer uses the same social media channels to tell everyone else how helpful and attentive you were when it came to solving their problem.
• Ask questions of your audience to find out what they are interested in and what they are thinking about. Listening goes a long way toward creating an authentic experience for customers.
• Be sure to regularly thank your audience for their trust and business. While it sounds simple, most companies do not spend time actually saying, “thank you.” It makes an incredible difference in the mind of customers who often feel they are taken advantage, manipulated, or simply unappreciated.
• Keep the messages and dialogue going. If you disappear and then come back only to disappear again, customers are not sure of just how much you are really involved or concerned in what they want or what you are doing to secure their loyalty.

 

Reaching Out for Expert Social Media Advice

Sometimes it helps to bring in a partner who understands how to leverage social media in an effective and genuine way to help you take a more engaging approach with customers. What do you find the most challenging about trying to be authentic with your customers through these channels? Let us know as we would like to share your experience with others.

 

Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Still Making Social Media Mistakes

A recent article shows that, despite more business owners and entrepreneurs showing enthusiasm and well-meant strategies for social media, mistakes are still at an all-time high that is according to Guy Kawasaki, Founder of Alltop.com, bestselling author on social media, and speaker.

 

Here are some interesting insights from this social media and social marketing thought leader:

• Social media is really more about effort than expense.
• Test the waters of social media yourself by creating a personal account on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google+. If you are going to eventually use these for your business, a great way to understand what they do and how they work is to try them out yourself on a trial basis. Otherwise, you can’t really create goals and objectives on how to use them or understand what an Internet Marketing company can do for you if you haven’t first educated yourself.
• Make sure you have something that is great to talk about. Otherwise, great marketing can’t happen.

• Google+ has a lot to offer businesses and provides a better way to edit what has been done rather than dread the fact that once something is out there, you can’t change it.
• Businesses need to realize that search engine, SEO initiatives, and social media are all merging and working together, so it no longer makes sense to look at them separately.
• Too many businesses put out horrible content just for the sake of hoping they get some SEO leverage out of it. Website visitors want good and valuable stuff to read, so they will return again and again to those sites and businesses that provide it and make their life easier. Those that are driven to rely on horrible content stuffed with keywords will be left wondering why no one comes to their site.

SEO Skills Wanted

Another article further noted the importance of developing certain SEO skills or finding an Internet Marketing partner who can deliver these to better leverage the power of online marketing and social media:

• Technical SEO: This means knowing more than keywords and on-page optimization; it’s about server-side settings, sitemaps, rewrites and more.
• Social Media Marketing: This goes beyond maintaining accounts on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook; it’s about “creating fan acquisition strategies, working on building Twitter followers, and optimizing videos on YouTube.”
• Link Building: This involves everything from directories, association sites, and credible PR sites to social media platforms and pages.
• Usability and Information Architecture: As the article stated, “Learning about information architecture is critical as well since it’s all about how you organize content on your site, decide on your folder structure, and how you label elements on your site.”
• Content Marketing: This is what engages users and turns them into reoccurring visitors to your site. Therefore, it is important to understand and develop skills around content creation and content distribution.

 

Those that do not have these skills or do not partner with the right Internet Marketing firm are making a big mistake and losing out on considerable opportunities to achieve a better Web presence, greater customer base, and sustainable revenues. Flyline can help you by providing these skills for you while you take care of servicing your new customers and growing your business.