Engaging Customers Through Social Media

When you run a small business, you offer customers a personal experience unlike one they would get at a major corporation. But, how is your online presence? In addition to face-to-face interactions, you should be engaging customers through social media.

You don’t have time to do everything when you run a small business. However, you should come up with a social media engagement strategy to make sure your customers are happy all-around.

Talking about an experience at a business is easy to do online, and it reaches a large audience.

What is social media engagement?

Social media customer engagement is when your business grabs the attention of customers through social media. It means that your business interacts with your customers online in a friendly, fun, and productive way.

Engaging customers through social media means talking with them on a public platform that other viewers can see. A public platform, like posts on a social media account, gets your small business out there.

Your customers aren’t the only ones who will see what your business has to say. If you know how to successfully engage on social media, friends and followers of your customers’ social media accounts can also see and learn about your business.

Facebook measures engagement with reactions, comments, and shares.

Engaging customers through social media

Be part of the online conversation. Engaging customers through social media can have a direct impact on building brand awareness and the number of customers you attract.

Get started engaging customers with these social media marketing tips for small business.

Be active

To get your brand out there, you should set up a small business website and social media accounts. But, the work doesn’t stop there.

You need to be active in engaging customers through social media or your accounts will be a flop. Some social media engagement tactics that can strengthen your overall strategy include:

  • Responding to complaints and recommendations
  • Posting regularly
  • Sharing relevant content
  • Replying quickly
  • Talking about upcoming discounts and events at your small business

Engaging Customers Through Social Media visual

Be personal

Small businesses have the upper hand on large corporations when it comes to creating a personal experience. Customers can expect to talk to you and not an automated service when they have questions.

You need to carry your small business mentality into your social engagement strategy. Here are some social media engagement ideas to add a personal touch to your approach:

  • Have the employee replying to customers on social media sign their comments with their name
  • Leave a personal message when you reach out to individuals, not just a standard response
  • Post photos of people at your small business
  • Share photos of your business that customers post
  • Create a branded hashtag (#) and ask customers to tag their social media posts with it
  • Ask your customers their opinions about products

Patriot Software customer Whipped Up Wonderful, for example, regularly asks questions on Instagram to better understand the preferences of her customers.

Be helpful

Social media shouldn’t be one giant sales pitch to your customers. Make sure you use platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn to post relevant content that people can benefit from.

If your customers trust your opinion and advice, they will be more apt to continue buying from your small business. Here are some ways your customer engagement through social media can be helpful:

    • Post relevant content related to your business and industry
    • Share statistics
    • Share information from other small businesses in different industries
    • Include snippets from your small business blogs
Example: “Heads up! Ohio’s minimum wage just increased from $8.10 to $8.15!”

Why does engaging customers through social media matter?

Your social media engagement strategy is one of the most important things you can do to get your brand out there and talked about. In fact, one study said that 30% of people might avoid going to a business without a social media presence.

Talking about social media, Guy Kawasaki, marketing specialist and author, said:

It’s what establishes awareness for your business, connects you to current and prospective customers, and enables you to promote your business.

Still wondering why engaging customers through social media is important? More and more customers turn to social media to:

  • Complain
  • Rave about a good experience
  • Search for specials
  • Seek customer support
  • Look at photos
  • Find information about businesses (store hours, products/services)

Having a presence on social media will help you address customer complaints efficiently, thank them for praise, and provide useful information about your business.

Not answering a complaint on social media can decrease customer loyalty up to 50%. On the other hand, answering a complaint on social media can increase customer loyalty up to 25%.

Need a reliable source of information for operating your small business? Check out Patriot Software’s payroll blog and accounting blog for consistent tips that will make your life easier.

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