Social media has immensely benefited startups and small businesses all over the world by giving them a special leverage to gain prominence and foster customer relationships. Brands are no longer limited to offering customer service through traditional means such as partnering with an outsourced call center in the Philippines. This multi-channel approach enables business owners to broaden their marketing reach while strengthening their customer service strategies.

The workflow of social media marketing is easy to follow: you publish amazing content and share it with your social media network. Many business owners will leave it at that and just wait until their search engine rankings or website traffic get boosted. Content promotion, however, is only one step of the game. There are more rules you need to follow if you truly want to be a winner in social media.

How to engage with customers online

Facebook and Twitter are great avenues to expand your customer service. It may be intimidating to publicly interact with people at first, since you may feel the pressure to sound as eloquent and informative as possible. But how you handle each inquiry will constitute your brand personality. Responses to customer inquiries on social media must always be both helpful and timely; you can t choose just one of these two.

Several customers won’t directly send you messages or post on your wall, so you need to actively search for posts where your brand is mentioned or tagged. Every single effort you invest in your social customer service campaign will affect your image of being customer-centric. If you choose to ignore complaints or other negative posts, you could lose the chance to correct mistaken details or save your reputation.

When a customer reaches out to you, your response can be your own way of expressing gratitude to them for taking time to mention your brand. Facebook s like and Twitter s favorite actions are some forms of acknowledgment that you can use when a customer shares their experience with your brand. By doing so, you are showing your customers that you value their opinion and that their message has been well-received.

If you want to take the response a notch higher, you can comment on the post or tweet the person back. Whether it s just a simple thank you or a lengthy answer, composing a personalized message can mean a lot to your customers. This gesture can express sincerity that can appease even upset customers.

Why online interaction matters

Social media engagements are very much similar to face-to-face interactions with your acquaintances. If your friends keep on inviting you to join them for dinner and you never bothered to respond, there will come a time when they will eventually grow tired of asking. You built a community on social media for a reason; the last thing you want to happen is to make the members of your online community feel ignored.

Although online interactions are much less personal than when a customer goes to your brick-and-mortar store, relationships built online can take you places. The responses you make on customer inquiries right now can serve as helpful references for other people in the future. If you guide a customer in resolving a technical issue online in public, you re not only guiding that person solely but everyone else who might be experiencing the same problem.

Along with the many benefits that social media can give to your customer service comes the responsibility of optimizing this platform and turning it into an effective tool for strengthening your relationship with your customers. How you respond to every post made on your social media account can say a lot about how you treat your customers. First impressions last, so make your initial response to your customers truly remarkable.