Your Doctor assesses your health and tells you to change your diet, get rid of the flab and build some muscle. You look at the evidence, do some research, ask around and then make some important decisions. You decide to incorporate exercise, eat right and treat your body like the temple that it is. Building your social muscle is similarly important to deliver healthy benefits to your organization, if you can listen, engage, innovate and connect.
Michael Stelzner, well-known white paper author and founder of http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com, states 83% of marketers consider social media a significant business tool; a whopping 94% report using social media as a marketing strategy. Marketing through YouTube and video marketing in general, are number one on marketers’ priority tools with 76% of marketers planning to invest in this area during this year, in 2012, according to the Report.
Social customer care offers health benefits to businesses that exercise and build muscle on social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs and YouTube – these five platforms ranked top in the same order in the list of social media tools used by marketers, in Stelzner’s 2012 report. Here are some of the key benefits to building your social muscle:
1. Customer Engagement – Building a healthy brand requires that you stay in close relationship with your customers. In a January 2012 study by Wildfire Interactive, a firm producing software for social media marketing, 85% of the 700 + respondents comprising marketers all over the world, stated that social media helped them engage with their customers. This is of significance since continuous customer engagement is essential to build long-term relationships and develop a strong customer base. With social media, it’s possible to bring a range of creative content in text, image or video format, easily to garner consumer attention.
2. Brand Awareness – It’s an old saying, but “you need to be in it to win it”. In the same Wildfire Interactive survey 88% of those surveyed reported that social media helped generate exposure for their brand. You need to continually write, video, interact and be involved. With the social web content is king. Write me and I will send you my list of creative content ideas to get you brand awareness muscle toned and tuned in.
3. Direct Connections – Direct social interactions, compared to other forms of marketing and customer engagement, offer the greatest and quickest opportunities to liaise with customers directly without any go-between. This “straight to the heart communication” facilitates the flow of authentic information, which is crucial for building trust regarding the brand in customers. And, if you can get the whole organization involved, you can learn a lot!
The immediacy of the medium also helps organizations take instantaneous action, which is valuable in such cases as resolving customer complaints or product safety issues. Similarly, feedback or views and opinions about a brand are available instantly for scrutiny and crowdsourcing for research, opinions and feedback. And, everyone has an opinion!
4. Improves Your SEO Ranking and Website Muscle – It also stands to reason that if you are working your social muscle you’ll get more respect. For example, 55% of marketers report improvement in search engine ranks while 69% of marketers indicate increase in traffic, from the use of social media, in Stelzner’s 2012 annual social media report. As brand exposure and customer engagement increase, consumers are more likely to be interested in knowing more about a brand, which procures website traffic.
5. Provides Social Smarts – Furthermore, according to Stelzner’s study, 65% of marketers found social media a valuable tool to acquire business market insights. More than 70% of marketers that have been employing social media for more than or equal to a year reported this benefit.
6. Generates Interest– Finally, when you have muscles, you generate interest. Like 58% of marketers in Stelzner’s study reported an increase in leads from the use of social media. 61% of marketers saw improvement in leads by spending just 6hrs every week on social media.
So, what are you waiting for? If you don’t know how to get the health benefits for social media hire a trainer (that’s what we do!). You’ll reduce your marketing costs and improve sales with social care muscles. So, stay social, listen and innovate! You will open up new partnership opportunities and build a better, leaner, faster business.
