Social media: it gets stale fast. Be careful.
It is time to understand the importance of social media and your responsibility to maintain your presence on whateversites you select. Social media is ultimately special because of its interactive nature. Your clients and prospects canpost questions, observations, remarks (both good and bad). Because of this, it is important that you consistentlymonitor your page. If they ask questions, they want answers. If you had a storefront and a customer walked in, youwouldn’t ignore them would you? Same for social media. Also, each question they ask is not only an opportunity to helpthem understand how your product or service meets their needs, it is an opportunity to understand features and optionsthat you presently may be overlooking. That can help expand and grow your business and open new target markets.
And that takes us to the part about social media marketing that makes some people a little uneasy. It is not justquestions about features and options that can appear on your facebook or twitter feed. It can be remarks, andobservations, not all of which are going to be positive. Complaints and bad reviews are also going to pop up. One hopesnot frequently but they will appear. These have to be handled directly and promptly. Promptness matters because thelonger a negative remark goes unaddressed, the more other prospects will see it and take it into consideration. Therehas been some research suggesting negative reviews carry more weight than positive ones. These things must be handleddirectly and straightforwardly. If you can find a resolution to a problem, do it. In many cases the customer may post afollow-up note thanking you. That will be seen by everyone. If you cannot address the problem, be honest about why youcannot meet a certain need. Honesty is always appreciated. The worst thing is ignoring any posts to your social mediapages. That is the biggest mistake you can make.