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How many times have you heard the following phrase?
Social media is the place to go to engage and connect with clients, not sell them something
I would add the following phrase
Client Engagement should be occurring all the time, it is not exclusive to social media.
I believe there is a thought out there that all companies are engaging with their clients on social media sites and that companies need to be online if they want to engage properly. I would argue that many opportunities to engage are around us everyday and we often take these opportunities for granted or worse, ignore them completely. Let me give you some examples.
Front Desk – How many companies don’t have a person welcoming people as they come into your building? This is a huge missed opportunity. Talk about a welcoming presence.
Greeting Guests at Your Company – How many executives are too lazy or busy to get out from behind their desks and go up and great a visitor at your company location. This too, is a missed opportunity.
Out in Public – You wear a company, logo shirt and someone asks you a question about your company, how many times do people just brush off those type of questions and don’t pay much attention to the person asking the question.
Email, Voice-Mail – Is your message pleasant when responding to questions or is it a half-sentence from your smartphone. Do you have the same generic everyone else has, “leave a message after the beep and I will get back to you when I can”
Listening – Do you listen to your clients or guests and the information they are sharing? Be careful not to be too quick to control the conversation. Remember the client has made an effort to visit or connect with you. You should treat him/her with respect.
My point here is there are many ways to engage and social media is a small part of that equation. These other areas may be more important with respect to maintaining client connections and you can make a real difference, if you put these things in place. I believe social media can make us a little lazy and the engagement word is used rather loosely. Maybe it’s time to look closer at how to engage clients and doing this may help your overall.
Finally, how should you engage online with social media?
Here are some tips I use:
- Be different – Say something that means something to a person.
- Call out someone directly – A reply can often be better than another retweet
- Follow-up with an email or a separate comment
- Ask someone a question – They should respond if they want to engage. Pretty obvious!
- Share quality content that is worth talking about. Enough said!
Image courtesy of ambro/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net
