Customer Engagement: Part 2- Essential Best Practices For Customer Interaction

Some of the best practices for engaging with customers online include interacting with every user that engages and avoiding confrontational commenting responses.

Now that you know how to best utilize your social media accounts and optimize your engagement, the next step is to learn how to most-effectively interact with your audience. To learn about the best practices for social media success, check out our previous article, Customer Engagement: Part 1- Essential Best Practices For Social Media Success.

Once you have customers liking, commenting, and sharing your content and personally messaging you, you need to know how to properly respond. Engaging with your audience in an appropriate and effective way is critical to the longevity of your business. So, whether it’s via direct messages or public comments on your posts, below are our five best practivces for making sure you interact with your customers in the best way possible:

5 Essentials of Customer Interaction

1. Interact With Every User That Engages: Especially for a young and growing business, it’s important to capitalize on every interaction that comes your way. If someone comments on your post, respond in a positive way. Thank them for the kind words, compliment them, or answer a question that they’ve asked. By personally responding, you’re showing your followers that you care about them and that there is a real person behind the screen. People will remember that personal interaction they had with you and will feel more connected to you and your brand, making them more likely to be a customer and support your brand.
2. Avoid Confrontational Commenting Responses: While rude or offensive comments are a dime a dozen on the internet, the way you personally respond to these comments will have a lasting impact on your audience. So, while no one will remember a mean comment left on your post, your response will be remembered if it’s out of line. When it comes to responding to mean comments, either kill them with kindness or don’t respond at all. You can also delete comments and block users if their comments are too offensive. At the end of the day, just make sure that every interaction you’re having is productive to your brand and to making connections with your customers. If something can be hashed out, do it kindly. If someone is just being crude or mean, don’t give them the time of day.
3. Include Information or a Follow-Up: If a customer has a question or wants more information regarding a product or your company, make sure that they are provided with an email address or some other way to get in touch with you or a team member. Additionally, at the end of a direct message interaction with a customer, always finish the conversation by providing them with a way they can contact you if they have any additional questions. While this information can likely be easily found on your site or social media, customers appreciate the convenience and customer service of you directly providing it for them.
4. Avoid Subjects That Are TMI: While it’s great to interact with customers and get to know them personally, try to keep things professional. Don’t talk about religion, politics, or other controversial topics unless they are relevant to your business. Additionally, don’t get too comfortable with your customers. While some personal details of your life can improve the authenticity of your brand, other details are better kept private.
5. Don’t Take it Personally: Finally, perhaps the biggest lesson to learn in interacting with strangers online is don’t take things too personally. If someone says your products are bad or says your company is terrible, don’t take it to heart. Of course, if you are receiving a large number of comments criticizing a particular aspect of your business, it might be time to re-evaluate that aspect. But, generally speaking, it’s best to take these sorts of interactions with a grain of salt.

By interacting with your customers in a positive and effective way, they will feel like they have a connection with you and will want to continue to support you and your brand. This is why, as you’re running social media accounts for your e-commerce business, you have to make sure that you’re posting the kind of content that will encourage interaction in the first place. Customers want to interact with a social media feed that feels fun, easy to navigate, and informative. So, how do you provide that? While part one to this two-part blog lists twelve ways this can be achieved, here are our five final tips on making sure you post content that will encourage customer interaction:

5 Final Tips for Successful Posts

1. Use Video as Much as Possible: While written content is fine to post, most of your social media followers would prefer to watch a video instead of reading a full-length article. So, instead of writing a paragraph explaining your new product or event, consider recording yourself speaking on the subject. Additionally, try to add captions to your videos if you can by either adding text yourself or using an app to transcribe your words. Transcribed videos are extremely beneficial for not only viewers who are hard of hearing, but for people who cannot play sound for whatever reason while they are watching.
2. Provide a Narrative for Your Posts: Though not every post has to be involved in an ongoing narrative, try to make posts that do follow an ongoing story. If your store is selling a new skin product, show yourself trying the product, and then do daily check-ins throughout the week to show your results. If your store sells exercise equipment, show off your daily workout routine each morning. Linear content gives your followers a sense of security and will have them coming back each time the story is updated to learn more. After all, we all love a good story, right?
3. Proofread Before Publishing: Make sure that you are always proofreading before you publish anything. Whether it’s a one-sentence post on Twitter or a blog update on your website, proofreading is key. For many customers, seeing things like misspelled words and incorrect punctuation will be an immediate turn-off. It will make your business look unprofessional, leaving many customers thinking that you don’t care about your business and your products.
4. Tie in a Call-To-Action, But Don’t Be Too Self-Serving or Sales-y: If you make a post showing how excited you are for a new product on your store, don’t make the viewer feel like you’re forcing this new product on them. At the end of the video or written post, mention where the customer can learn more about that product without seeming like you’re trying too hard. Customers can sense if you are desperate for them to buy your product, and if they get that feeling from you, they will likely be turned off from you and your products.
5. Use Appropriate Hashtags, But Not Too Many: Make sure to use appropriate hashtags when you post, but don’t overwhelm the post with them. As a rule of thumb, try to not use more than 3 hashtags per post, 5 max. If you add dozens of hashtags to a post, the content gets lost in the sea of pound signs. Additionally, make sure that your hashtags make sense for what you’re posting about. There’s no need to include topics that you personally care about but are not necessarily relevant to the post in the hashtags. The whole purpose of hashtags is for people to find your content in connection to other content that they’re searching for, so make sure that you make this task easy for them.

Social media is an ever-changing place that is constantly introducing new updates and trends. To keep up to date on what’s popular and what’s being used in each space, follow social media accounts of other businesses that inspire you. Take note of their engagement and see how you can apply their methods to your own social media in your own unique way.

What’s your favorite form of social media? Let us know below!

Originally published at https://www.soap-bx.com on September 25, 2020.