Social Media Is Your Secret Weapon in Customer Service

We all know the statistic in one way, shape or form: It costs five, six or even seven times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain one. social media marketing jobs While the actual cost difference between acquisition and retention may alter slightly depending on which study you read, there is no mistaking that the cost is exponentially higher to acquire a new customer vs. retaining an existing one. So it is important you are accommodating (considerate) to your current customer base. Indeed, 82 percent of consumers in the U.S. said they stopped doing business with a company due to poor customer experience, according to Customers That Stick, a company focused on the customer-service arena.To avoid this outcome (one that can have damaging and prolonged effects on a given company) businesses need to ramp up their customer-service game and not just by providing mediocre service. Companies should provide the ability to interact, engage and provide superb customer service in real time on social media. In a survey conducted by research group Loyalty 360, more than 25 percent of businesses indicated they ranked social media as the most effective channel for customer retention. The main reasons being is social-media marketing allows for brands to speak directly to customers (and attract new ones), along with easy access to companies. Unfortunately, not every company has caught the social-media bug. Approximately 70 percent of customer-service complaints made on Twitter go unanswered, according to a study conducted by Maritz and evolve24. Creating content that will go viral can be practically a science, according to Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. what is social media marketing In his 2013 book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On, he outlined six qualities that predispose a piece of content to go viral on social media, the first and foremost being “social currency.”Internet users put a lot of stock in how they appear online, so any piece of content they share should elevate their status or show their social currency.

Real time feedback and engagement

Face it, other than a phone call, what other medium allows your company to engage in real time with its customers? And since no one uses their phones at least not their mobile phones -- to make actual phone calls, more and more consumers are going to social media for customer-service related issues. social media marketing university (This may also have to do with our short-attention span and need for immediate results.)“A year ago, when [consumers] got a social media response from a brand on a customer care issue, they were pleasantly surprised. We’re getting to the point now that if companies don’t respond, they will have a black mark against them,” said Dennis Stoutenburgh, the co-founder of Stratus Contact Solutions, a customer-care company, at a panel last year.The content could be funny, which would show that the user has a great sense of humor. It could contain an important piece of political news, showing that the person posting the tidbit knows a lot about current events. Berger also collaborated on a 2011 piece in the Journal of Marketing Research, “What Makes Online Content Viral?,” after studying articles published by The New York Times for three months to see what kind of emotions played into a piece of content going viral. Berger and his co-author, Katherine Milkman, found that content displaying positive emotions had the potential to go viral more than that showing negative emotions. Some pieces displaying negative emotions also went viral, if they were “high-arousal” emotions, like anger or anxiety. Sadness, on the other hand, a “low-arousal” negative emotion had less viral potential. There is no such thing as targeting “everyone,” especially it comes creating contact that others will want to share via social media, according to a 2011 study by The New York Times Co., social media marketing services “The Psychology of Sharing.” Different demographic groups behave differently, the study indicated, breaking social media consumers into six different types of personas (altruists, careerists, hipsters, boomerangs, connectors and selectives), who all were prompted to share for different reasons and via different platforms.

Keep your customers up to date

Yes, you can send out promotional emails, run display ads and nab television and radio spots to let customers know about timely announcement. But what do you do when you want to remind your customers of these promotions and sales? social media marketing companies What do you do if you have a special sale or event that you want to promote very quickly? You turn to social media, the platform that was born for last-minute marketing. A company's followers on social media are the same people who have raised their proverbial hand to indicate a willingness to be kept informed of all goings on within your company.Instead posting generic articles, be more news-focused. Look around at recent news, try to dig up something that would be relevant to one's business. Is the birthday of a celebrity or leader in a business related to your company's focus? Is there a big sporting event coming up that you mention that dovetails with company news?Nielsen's “U.S. Digital Consumer Report” released in February showed that people are spending more time on mobile devices than PCs to access the internet. When comes to accessing the web more than 34 hours a month are spent by the average consumer on smartphones as opposed to 27 hours on a computer. Over the past year, use of personal computers for web access dropped almost two hours, while smartphone usage for internet access climbed almost 10 hours. Any content created, whether it’s an infographic, article or video, must pass the mobile test. Otherwise, users might just skip it. With the plethora of social media platforms available, it can be exhausting to post on all of them. But this can boost a company brand’s credibility and, with more followers or likes, social media marketing plan the firm will gain exposure and consumer trust. And a user that trusts a brand is more likely to share its content. BRANDfog’s "2014 Global/Social CEO Survey" noted that 71 percent of its U.S. respondents said that a company whose senior-level executives use social media are more trustworthy.