Merely claiming your company’s domain name on a few major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc and posting some dispatches sporadically will not suffice – if you are keen t boost your business using social media.
Many business owners rely on HootSuite, a social media management system that allows them to monitor a handful of social profiles in a single place. Hootsuite’s geo-located searches filter results according to distance, so business owners are able to see Tweets and Facebook messages of people in the area.
Constant monitoring of the positive and negative things customers are saying about your brand will help you take suitable action promptly. Business owners also use Hootsuite to keep vigil over the activities of competitors, learning what consumers are saying—positive and negative—about other brands.
Social media has come to stay and research studies reveal that almost 64 percent of small and mid-size businesses are using social media analytics to boost their sales. Further, two-thirds of the study’s participants confirm that their executive decision-making is influenced through intelligence gathered from social media.
Researchers opine “Organizations that are essentially social media spectators—they make periodic posts and are doing virtually no analytics—are getting a fraction of the value from their social media efforts.” This finding should make business owners realize the importance of social media analytics.
The key to boosting sales via the social media is the art of listening. Learn what people are saying about your business/brand and unobtrusively take control of the conversation.
To do this successfully, you should set up a general protocol on how to monitor and respond to social media trends. After researching which review forums your customers proliferate—you can use free tools, like Google Alerts, to monitor your brand mentions or use HootSuite to search key phrases across a few major social networks.
Encourage feedback information through social media. Do not hesitate to openly ask your happy customers to write positive reviews and share them with their friends.
Followers of your company’s social media sites may also make a good sounding board for testing out the market of the new products you may plan launching.
React promptly and courteously to negative comments as a disgruntled customer once placated may bring in more customers to boost your business.