Communicating with Customers and Clients Using Social Media

Customer service is a huge part of a small business’ success in the market place.  Consumers love knowing that the person in charge of a business is someone they can contact directly when they have questions or concerns.  They like having the expert at their disposal.  Many successful small business owners are ultimately great communicators that can answer questions effectively and efficiently.  For most, however, they are missing out on the chance to showcase their knowledge to broad audience by not incorporating Social Media into their customer service routine.  The purpose of this article is to point out a few simple ways to use Social Media accounts to interact and engage customers in a public forum.

                Why use Social Media?

                Social media is unique in that it is the easiest way for good information and content to go viral.  This means that through the simple click of a button someone can share information and content they find interesting or informative to their entire social networks.  So if you the business owner and expert create a post in a social media account, and someone in your social network thinks your post would be beneficial to people in their network, they can simply share your post.  That means your content not only reached the people in your network but all the people in their network as well.  Imagine if 3 out of the 100 people in your network shared your content with the 100 people in their networks.  Now your content was just shared to 400 potential customers that you might not have reached any other way.  And they steps can go on and on till you have reached thousands of people who you had no other chance at reaching.  As you can see it’s extremely powerful word of mouth advertising for your business. 

                Customer service via Social Media

                So how do you create the most relevant content that you are sure people will need and ultimately share with their networks?  How do you identify key areas of necessary information that you can give to your fans or followers?  The answer is simple.  Let them decide what they want to hear. 

                Open up your social media accounts as an interactive forum.  Tell all of your customers and clients that you contact during the normal operation of business to use their Facebook and Twitter accounts to send you their questions and comments, rather than sending you an email or through other methods of direct contact.  That way others in your network can see both the questions people are asking you, and your expert responses.  This does two things for your business: 

1.       It displays to everyone in your network you are an expert that consumers are looking to for opinions and solutions.

2.       It eliminates the need for you to answer the same question 100 different times.  After all, if one customer or client has a question for you, at least 10 others probably have the same question themselves.

If you follow these guidelines to use your social media accounts as interactive forums potential customers will notice your helpfulness and expertise in your field.  This will ultimately lead to an increase in clientele and a better reputation for your company.