Twitter For Customer Service

Twitter is a platform that has had its ups and downs, good ideas and bad ideas. Like any social network it has its own special quirks that make it unique. Twitter started the idea of the newsfeed, hashtags, it brought periscope out for live video just to name a few.

One thing that Twitter really shines on is the ability to have a conversation with anyone and go back and forth with other people jumping in and it being perfectly acceptable. Businesses can search for what people are asking and give helpful tips and strategies.

From this conversation and chatter format twitter has become a powerhouse for companies to answer questions, deal with complaints or even give a fist bump to customers. This puts you on a new level in terms of being there to continually build the relationship with the customer.

If you think about it you have a platform with a ton of users and their attention focused on that platform. They visit your website and have a few questions after looking around for a bit, they see a big banner that says "Questions? Let's chat on twitter!"

From here they can go to your twitter account, ask the questions they have and you can continue to keep their attention and show them that you care. They will most likely even follow your brand.

You can even take it up a notch and put a twitter chat box directly in your website so when they have that question the platform is already on your website, they can ask the question and you can build that relationship.

Before you do this with your brand I encourage you to interact with some of the bigger brands and see how well they respond and react to your Twitter questions and comments. That'll give you a feel for how it feels to be the customer in the scenario and how unique it makes you feel to get a rapid response from brands like Starbucks and T-Mobile to name a few.

Before you write Twitter of, start using it for questions, comments and concerns for your brand. It gives you the opportunity to interact and be more human and it gives your customers the ability to ask questions and get their issues addressed right away. Because if you don't address their questions and issues another brand who is on top of it will.

It all comes down to really caring about your customers and working to address what they need before they even purchase from you. The goal is to give an incredible experience from the second they become aware of your bran, all the way until they've been a loyal purchaser of your products or service for years.

Facebook Retargeting

One of the most powerful and cost effective tools we have available to market our businesses is Facebook ads. It is a massive platform with obscene amounts of data compiled about almost anything you are even remotely interested in.

Because of this incredible amount of data Facebook has available we are able to construct highly targeted ads to people who have already expressed an interest in something similar to what you do or fit the profile of a specific buyer persona you have created.

Then there's the Facebook pixel. A little nugget of joy that allows us to track who visits specific pages on our website, what processes they were in when they visited and it allows you to build up a website audience off of that pixel.

When you create an audience from your Facebook pixel based off of traffic to your website it will take the people who visited and compile an audience called website visitors that you can use to run ads to.

Think about it this way: someone visits your website from something you posted on Facebook, looks at the page, doesn't convert and leaves your website. With the website audience created from your Facebook pixel you can retarget the people who visited that page and didn't convert with an ad.

Maybe you say thanks for visiting the site and offer them a free guide, consult etc. The big thing about this is that you are now targeting an audience that is no longer completely cold and by putting your brand in front of them more often you are essentially creating and building a relationship with them to move them from cold to warm to hot. When they're hot that's when you finally go for the ask!

The next idea to look at are look alike audiences. Say you've worked on a website audience, had some success and it doesn't seem to convert anymore or you need a fresh audience that's similar to what you were working with.

The lookalike audience does just that. You will take your website audience and create a lookalike audience in your audiences section of your Facebook as manager. The lookalike audience is exactly what is sounds like. It is a audience with similar characteristics to your website audience based of the profiles of the people in your website audience.

For local and small businesses it's smart to choose the 1% lookalike audience when you are creating it. The key to marketing to a lookalike audience is to not expect them to convert right away.

This is now a cold audience and in order to warm up a cold audience you have to put out excellent content for them to consume. I would spend at least a month putting good content in front of this audience and then go for an ask, which is simply revealing what your product is and asking them to purchase it or book a session with you for a consultation.

You can create these audiences from email lists, video views, content people engaged with on Facebook or even people taking action on an app.

The possibilities to continue to create new audiences and work them from cold to hot are endless and if you show that what you have is worth it by first building trust and a relationship through excellent content then you will garner a following of fans who will use your products and/or services!

You Have To Go For The Ask!

Content is king! At least that's what we're told. It's often touted that if we produce a bunch of high quality content and distribute it effectively then we will bring in as many customers as we need, develop a following and produce awareness around our brand.

You work hard producing blog posts, taking pictures, creating entertaining and educational videos and post them to all your social networks. Maybe you even promote that content well across your networks and get it in front of a ton of people. This is often a process you work on for months and months with lots of late nights trying to think up good stuff.

But then the unthinkable happens....you don't get a ton of return or no return at all on what you're producing and you just can't seem to figure out why with all the work you're doing to make your content so great. Our first thought in this scenario is that a content driven strategy just doesn't work for your business or that you have no idea what you're doing and need help.

Now take a step back and think about what you've produced. Out of all the educational, motivational and downright awesome stuff you produce at no point did you actually ask the people following your brand to come in and try your product or service out. People are very process oriented and will do what those that they trust tell them to do or ask them to do.

Working to develop the following and building trust around your brand is one of the steps in the process, but we can't forget that once we build up a solid relationship it's okay to ask people to come in and try out what you have or to buy your products or services.

It doesn't even have to be sales oriented copy in your ask. You can put something like:

We ❤️ you Reno! Let's get together with a free 1-on-1 introductory training session!

This is simple, friendly and continues to build the culture around what you offer. It takes the consumer out of the typical sales transaction and into a warm fuzzy feeling about you and what you offer.

While it's true that content is the most important aspect to building a recognizable brand and developing awareness around that brand.

Now you can't ask every day or it'll get old and you will lose trust with your consumers for being too "salesy". Every business is different and the best way to get an idea of when you should go for the ask is to do it after you put out different pieces of content.

Maybe you ask after three pieces one time, five pieces another time, seven the next and so on. Once you've done this for a bit you can get a feel for how often is too often and what is just right!

I'd say a good average would be after 3-4 pieces of really good content. You'll want to ask the same audience that you gave the great content to!

Remember content is gold, but you have to go in for the ask every so often or you'll never get any business!

Getting Your Content Out There!

In marketing today it's common to be told you need to utilize an inbound strategy to build up trust with your audience in order to show them that what you offer is a good fit for them.

The inbound strategy focuses on a few key aspects to get information to consumers. One of them being production of content in several different forms. In this blog post we're going to be talking about how you should distribute your content in order to get it in front of as many people as possible.

Your videos should be placed directly on Facebook and YouTube, blog posts should live in your blog and if possible you should work to guest blog for as many people as possible.

Now we have a bunch of content, but we want to get it in front of your network of people. You want to share your videos and blogs posts to each of the networks they are not already on.

Blog posts should be shared to Facebook (via their instant articles format if possible), Instagram by placing the link to the article in your bio, Snapchat by putting a simple URL in the text field and asking people to screenshot it and by emailing it out to your list of people who have opted in to receive information from you.

Videos are going to operate in much the same way. They go directly to Facebook to maximize reach and YouTube to gather a following on that platform. Facebook will give you significantly less reach for sharing a YouTube link to Facebook so this is why we do not just post on YouTube only.

Sharing videos is done similar to what we did for blogs. For Instagram I'll usually alternate sharing my Facebook and YouTube links for videos and the same with Snapchat.

We should also look at a repurposing strategy for content. This is a huge timesaver and a way to maximize the ability to use your content and to put it in front of as many people as possible in the different ways they consume content. Think about the ways people learn, listen and evolve:

  • Some people listen
  • Some people watch
  • Some people read

Our goal is to put out enough content to make sure we capture all these segments and the different ways people learn and consume.

Repurposing is simply using content in different ways. For example if you make a video you turn that video into a blog post, then turn that blog post into a podcast, turn that podcast into several different quotes you can place on pictures.

If you did a weekly video podcast you could essentially take bits and pieces of that podcast and repurpose it to make several different pieces of content that you can use to market your business.

Your goal with all of this is to build up a base of subscribers in all your different platforms to ensure you have a varied base and are not depending on one platform for everything in your marketing efforts.

Ultimately email will be your primary driver for follow ups as you will have the most potential for reach and follow up.

Facebook is about building trust....not selling

Facebook has a massive user base of many different people from many different cultures and walks of life. People go on Facebook and other social networking sites to be able to unplug, see what there friends are doing, check out the latest news from around the world and to feel a little more connected to society.

Because there's so much attention on Facebook and so many people are on it businesses and marketers see it as an opportunity to sell products and services. If there's that many people in Facebook it must be pretty easy to sell on the platform right?

Turns out people don't want to be sold on social media. They want to get away from the selling, click bait marketing and other common tactics employed by marketers. Think about it; when your scrolling through Facebook and you happen across a blatant ad you scroll right past it. You don't have the time or patience to listen to another blah blah blah sales or landing page about features and benefits of a supposed wonder product.

So what makes you stop and click, share, comment or like something on a social network? For most people it has to be something that sparks emotion; it's a funny video or picture, meme, article that you find interesting or an educational piece that gives you some valuable info that you can use. Once you see enough of this stuff from a page on Facebook you start checking it regularly, like the page and begin to trust them as a resource for content you enjoy.

This is how we build a relationship with people and show them that we care more about them than sales by providing a tremendous amount of value at no cost. Now that we understand how people want to interact on social media and how they consume content on it. Why are traditional marketers still relying on short term tactics for selling with click bait Facebook ads, sending people to a landing page with a countdown timer (that never really hits zero), promising certain features and benefits and then sending a series of spammy emails encouraging people to hurry and buy now?

It's because they don't understand the changing landscape of marketing and haven't taken the time to learn how people want to be interacted with on social media. Plus it's much more difficult to produce content that actually helps people for free and the results take longer to show up in the form of new customers. But when they do you form a powerful relationship with your customers, because you already given them so much. Your brand will become so engrained with them that they will go out of their way to purchase the products and services.

When looking at the ideal strategy to build your brand and get people to purchase your products and services it's all about building that trust and developing a relationship with your customers. You do this by focusing on what they want and how they want it and this is through producing incredibly valuable information through blogs, videos, funny pictures and videos and interacting with them and talking back and forth when they have questions. It all comes down to LISTENING to your customers and reverse engineering your strategy to address their wants and needs!

ChansLogic Ep003

Welcome to the third episode of #ChansLogic! We will be making weekly videos answering questions about running a business, social marketing that doesn't suck and show how a business can be human and build trust via social media. This week, we dive into marketing locally, making your brand stand out amongst the rest, having someone run your business and working full time plus being an entrepreneur full time.

Be sure to subscribe to ChansLogic on iTunes!

Tag #ChansLogic to get your questions answered!

Be REAL. Be HUMAN. Be SOCIAL.