While the majority of consumers rate the relevancy of businesses by the relevancy of their online presence, they are turned off when business’s “market” to them through their social networking pages. While many business’s find having to tread lightly for social media marketing success to be confounding at best and a no win situation at worst, they remain confused on how to optimize their success through social media marketing.
Recent studies from the Insight Strategy Group found that more than half of social media users believe a business needs a social media presence in order to be considered relevant. More than 60 percent said they “hate” it when those same businesses target them through their social network profiles. About the same percentage also stated that they find it invasive and annoying.
So, what exactly are consumers looking for when they expect the businesses they follow through their social network profiles? Almost 60 percent reported they liked of followed their favorite brands, or brands that looked interesting in order to receive news and special deals from them. Most of that percentage said they give feedback to the brands through their social media profiles.
Consumers view their relationships with brands on social media as purely one-way, as 58 percent of respondents indicated that they liked or followed brands in order to receive special news and deals, and 55 percent mentioned giving feedback to brands. Apparently what this means is to tread lightly in regard to how you network in order to market to your social media followers. Offer them compelling news that is helpful to their daily lives and give them some great deals to get excited about.
Most of the people polled felt that they had a tremendous power to help make or break a business by how they talked about it to their social network followers. This makes it especially important to tread lightly for social media marketing success. The best thing you can do beyond only occasionally offering compelling news or great deals is to become engaged with your customers by offering top notch customer service.
Great customer service demands a reasonable response time if a consumer leaves a post on your page and if someone is complaining, makes it right, immediately. Contests and giveaways, humor and motivational quotes can be okay to throw into the mix from time to time, but keep your posts to a minimum per times a day in order to keep from annoying customers or causing them to stop following your business social network profile.
