The advent of social media is probably the most important thing that has happened to word of mouth marketing since the telephone was invented. Never before has it been so easy for people to discuss and recommend products and services to their friends and family. The opposite is also true of course, as a single tweet can have a devastating impact on a business if not properly tended to.
Here are a few tips to help devise a successful social media strategy that encourages word of mouth activity:
Keep the communication going both ways
Too many businesses make the mistake of treating social media as simple one-way communication. Most of the time they’re really only using it as a vehicle to broadcast their current offerings, and there’s very little personality or “fun” involved. Consumers typically get tired of these types of social media accounts pretty quick, as they feel that they’re constantly being marketed to.
A much better way is using social media to actually interact with consumers and encourage discussion. Instead of just pushing out endless offers and updates all day, ask the fans/followers questions! Instead of simply deleting negative posts, respond to them in a light or serious way depending on the situation. As long as other followers see the excellent, disarming responses, a couple of bad posts won’t do too much harm. In fact they serve to make the brand even more popular! The trick is just being personable and relatable, even if it’s the fan page of a huge multinational corporation.
Make sharing easy
This is more related to the business website. It’s essential to make sure sharing is easy and all pages are easily reached through a copy-paste friendly URL (which isn’t always the case on JavaScript-heavy websites). Using sharing buttons is a good idea in some cases, but it’s important to make sure they’re not slowing down the website too much, which happens sometimes.
