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We often think that a business’s brand image is defined by its logo, name, colors, and values. These elements are driven by the business and they only scratch the surface when it comes to understanding what a brand image is all about.
Ultimately, your brand image relies on how customers perceive it. Your business’s image is shaped every time a customer interacts with your brand at various touchpoints. Your ability to influence how people perceive your brand rests on how well you manage your customer’s journey. You need to ensure that every touchpoint offers a great experience to build your brand image in a positive light.
Social media is a major platform with multiple touchpoints that connect people with your brand. People spend a significant amount of time browsing their newsfeed and even expect to communicate with your business on social media. It’s essential that you build consistently positive experiences with your customers on social platforms.
There are several touchpoints and means through which you can build positive impressions. Here are some ideas that you can use to build your brand image by leveraging social media to boost customer experience.
Integrate Customer Experience from the Start
When creating your social media campaigns, it’s essential to make the customer experience a key part of the planning process. This means that you have to approach social media planning and content creation with customer experience as the main driver.
Ask yourself, ‘How can we build a memorable customer experience at every touchpoint on social media?’. When creating your ‘About’ page or adding profile images, what content do you need to include to create value?
When you make customer experience the heart of your social media campaigns, your content and strategies will reflect it. Very often, brands try to incorporate customer experience as an afterthought. You need to develop a mindset where customer experience is the motivating factor that drives all decisions. Doing so will help you build customer-oriented content and strategies that will boost brand loyalty and engagement.
Identify All your Social Media Touchpoints
One of the first steps you need to take is to identify and list every touchpoint on your social media. Track every platform where your business has an online presence. Find key touchpoints on each platform.
Touchpoints can include ads, photo albums, automatic responses to messages, and more. Your About page, call-to-action buttons, and profile and header images are also important touchpoints. In short, look for different ways customers come in contact with your brand.
Once you have a complete list of every touchpoint on social media, you’ll be able to create positive experiences for each touchpoint.
Finding all your social media touchpoints will enable you to ensure that you’re creating consistent interactions across different contact points. You will also ensure that you are fully leveraging every possible point of interaction available to you to improve customer experience.
Engage with Enthusiasm
As a business, you need to truly engage in a very active manner with your audience. Go beyond generic replies such as ‘Thank you for your comment’ when people leave comments and chat messages.
When engaging with your audience, put in the effort to show people that you’re really listening. Infuse humor into your conversation and personalize your responses.
Try to communicate with your audience as a person rather than a faceless corporate entity. When you engage with your user-base with enthusiasm and personalized responses, you’ll show that you’re paying attention.
Being responsive and engaged with your audience will build trust and enhance the customer journey.
Create Content that Helps
One of the most powerful ways to build trust and improve customer experience is to create content that helps users. You can do this by answering frequently asked questions and solving problems that users face.
Give users a voice on your social media platform so that they can and ask for help and get basic information. Use social listening tools to identify common problems your audience faces. Go above and beyond to answer their issues and support them.
You can create live videos on Facebook to do a quick Q and A. You can also add a survey tool or feedback form to ask your audience about the content they would like to see.
Your social media profile or page is a key touchpoint that can powerfully impact your brand image. Take an active role in using social media to create value for your audience. Building content that helps and answers their problems is a sure way to delight users and win a loyal user base.
Develop a Persona
People are more likely to engage with your brand on social media when they feel like they’re interacting with a person. You must humanize your brand and develop a persona for your social media communication.
You can do this by adopting a casual or informal tone when replying to your audience in comments. Injecting humor into your responses will also help your brand appear friendly and appealing.
People are also more likely to trust your business when they know that real people who are accountable are interacting with them. Ensure that you develop a brand persona from the very beginning when creating your social media content.
Build a Community
A key way to distinguish your brand and help your audience develop a special connection with your business is to build a community. People desire to belong to groups where they share the same values. Use your social media platform as a way to build a strong online community for your brand, product, or industry.
Another way that you can leverage social media to build a community is by driving traffic to your membership site. A membership site enables you to create gated content and to foster peer-to-peer interactions.
Brands like Nike, Starbucks, and Lego build strong online communities to inspire and educate people. Communities let people feel as if they belong to something bigger than themselves. It’s a way to create a meaningful experience that resonates with people and connects them to your brand on a personal level.
When you create a community, you also showcase social proof. Your audience will see your growing community and will trust that you’re a strong brand compared to your competitors.
Use Analytics and Reports
You can only improve what you can measure. It’s important to understand how well your content and social media campaigns are doing in order to improve them. Using analytics tools and reports will help you understand what campaigns and content are bringing in results.
You’ll also be able to identify tactics and content formats that don’t work with your audience. Using analytics tools will help you save time, effort, and resources by directing them where they work the best.
All social media platforms have analytics and report generation features for businesses. Tap into these features to get valuable insights and to manage your campaigns. It’s essential to use research and analytics tools to create more positive customer experiences.
Manage Critical Issues Proactively
Social media platforms enable you to connect with your audience. However, it can also lead to poor outcomes if you don’t prepare for emergencies.
People don’t just share positive experiences on social media. They are extremely vocal when they have a negative experience with a brand. It’s important for businesses to be prepared and to have a plan in place to manage negative PR on social media.
You need to have a clear understanding of who needs to manage communication when you get bad press online. It’s also helpful to discuss potential negative scenarios and to run a drill on how to respond to them.
One of the strongest ways to be prepared and to manage critical issues is to use social listening and sentiment analysis tools. They can help you pick up on negative chatter surrounding your brand.
You’ll be able to proactively make changes within your organization itself. You could also reach out to disgruntled customers and come up with a way to help them. By having a plan in place and using the right tools, you’ll be able to manage critical problems that may negatively affect your brand.
Create Positive Customer Experiences Using Social Media
Your audience spends a significant amount of time on social media. The way they interact with your brand on social media platforms can determine how well your business succeeds.
Influencing how people perceive your business is the only way you can shape your brand image. You need to create a compelling and memorable customer journey on social media from start to finish. This means that you have to ensure that every social media touchpoint gives users the best experience with your brand.
Leveraging social media in the right way and using helpful tools will enable you to create great customer experiences. By improving customer interactions you’ll impact your brand image and finally, your business success.
Use the tips given here to boost customer experience on social media and you’ll be able to grow your business to win more satisfied customers.
