Question: Our company is trying to use social media to drive interest in our product (aren’t we all) and we want to make sure not to just do social media like everyone else. Any special recommendations that will help us with this?
If I had to attribute one thing to fleeting social media efforts and wasted time on the platforms it is businesses that really have no idea what their customers want from their social media.
When I’m working with clients one of the first questions I ask them is why does anyone buy your product or service. Many times I get strange looks when I ask this question because they expect me to tell them that they need to tweet more or write more blogs and while I think that is a big part of any successful social media strategy, it is impossible to say that is the answer until you have a much better insight into your customer.
Generally, I assume you know demographically who your customers are and what it is that you sell, but I still believe that far too many companies have no idea why their customers are customers. Solve this and you will have a much better way to determine your social media needs.
So in short, before you spend another minute doing Social Media, I recommend that you spend some time answering the following three questions.
Why do your customers buy?
Why do your customer stay?
Why do your customer leave?
While these things may not seem like they are key to Social Media, it is critical that beyond just using it as a vehicle to tell people what you sell and how to buy it, that you use social media as a channel for sharing what motivates customers to buy. Also, if you understand why you keep and lose customers it will help you shape your business story online, not to mention tweak your business to increase customer retention.
Bottom line is in almost every field there are endless options (or at least more than a few) of products and services. To stand out above the noise you have to know what is driving customers to start doing business with you and to keep doing business with you.
Do you have a strong understanding as to why your customer buy from you and what keeps it that way? Get this insight and watch your social media efforts improve as you can better target your content and promotion channels with it.
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Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.