Using social media marketing to win client confidence
18 October 2012 0 Comments
I was reading this excellent
blog post about obsession with customer service by
Chris Brogan today, and it got me thinking about how businesses convey their commercial passions online – in particular, how a company expresses their uniqueness via
social media engagement and
social media marketing.
The
blog post from Chris clearly highlights the importance of giving a little bit more to customers, of showing them you actually care, and also (the most significant part for me) of making sure that customers are heard. His
brilliant question is a great one to answer:
“What’s the hardest part of doing business with you?”
The accessibility of social media platforms makes it an amazing
and at times hazardous place for companies to engage with existing and potential customers, as this tweet so
succinctly highlights:

How do
you convey your customer service excellence via
social media engagement? The usual (conventional) methods) are:
* Case studies
* Testimonials
* Product reviews
But, these methods are old-hat, and the average savvy customer looks at these as little more than
PR-enhanced techniques.
Effective
social media engagement, however, means that letting the customers say it for themselves, and then pass it on through their own networks, enables a different kind of voice to get out there – that of your
loyal customers, your raving fans.
A company saying that they are obsessed with delivering amazing customer service is one thing – but seeing a company such as
Zappos using Twitter as a
publicly-viewable vehicle for customers to raise queries, issues and complaints on is another level.
Now THAT’S what I call a
brave and visionary use of social media to clearly and unashamedly highlight to existing and potential customers just how crucially important they are to
Zappos as a contemporary, brave, open business.
Here are ways I enable my
obsession with client service to be seen:
* Invite a potential client to speak to
any of my current and previous clients.
* Ask for client feedback on a
regular basis – ideally, quarterly at minimum.
* Publish what clients think of me in their
own words – see more
here.
I’ll freely admit that as a
long-standing blogging consultant,
social media editor and
social media marketing consultant in Bristol, client service has always been one of my own personal obsessions.
Maybe that’s due to spending a decade in newspaper and magazine newsrooms, where daily deadlines must be met, or a P45 usually follows.
One thing I know without doubt is this: being passionate about client service and their social media success above all else means that a client knows they are getting something money can’t buy – the
personal attention of a highly motivated solo consultant.
And bearing in mind that most clients choose business partners and suppliers for
emotive reasons such as word-of-mouth recommendations, it becomes even clearer that being the same as the rest of your competitors simply isn’t an option anymore.
How do
you use
social media engagement and
blogging outreach to convey your
uniqueness to potential customers, and to win client confidence?
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