By Social media has changed the business/customer relationship completely. Businesses and customers can now communicate directly without barriers. Customers can provide feedback on new products instantaneously, while businesses can easily post videos, handle customer services issues and announce new ventures seamlessly from most any social media platform.
A recent survey by Social Marketing Watch indicated that nearly 40 percent of all social media users spend more time socializing online than in person. For cloud-computing companies, this means they must create an environment where they can reach out to current and potential clients, and those clients can reach out to them online. There are few avenues that achieve this better than social media channels.
Four Elements of Social Media Engagement
1. Be Attentive – Before social media, the only way for businesses to obtain customer feedback was through time-consuming outreach initiatives. This included both in-person and mail-out surveys to get a feel for what clients are thinking. Now cloud-computing businesses are able to gain a diverse sample of customer opinions from a single post. This is a crucial step in social media engagement.
Rackspace, an infrastructural cloud service provider known for their fanatical customer service, are among the best at listening to their customers online. They go to great lengths to make it easy for their clients to provide feedback on social networking sites. They do this by asking pointed cloud computing questions only their customer-base would be interested in answering.
3. Create Influencers – As your brand following expands, you will likely encounter a growing number of influencers. In general, influencers are people who love your cloud service, and want to essentially brag about you to their friends. This is quite possible the greatest word-of-mouth any cloud computing company can ask for. Essentially, these influencers are self-pronounced experts in your cloud service, and want to share how great you are with everyone they know. It’s important to acknowledge this segment of your social media followers early on, and leverage content geared towards creating influencers throughout your audience.
As cloud computing technology becomes more accessible, more and more cloud companies are expected to rise to 4. Measure & Test – Unfortunately, any social media outreach strategy doesn’t end at merely engaging with customers. Businesses need to be constantly aware of what their followers are and are not responding to on a regular basis. This involves measuring the quality of posts, conversations and individual responses. From there you can test new content and campaigns. Since public opinion is always in a state of flux, your measuring and tested methods need to be flexible as well.
the surface. This means more social media accounts to compete with. The reality is that it’s becoming increasingly difficult for cloud companies to set themselves apart online using only social media strategy. The best way to ensure a high level of visibility is to create a sustainable environment of social media engagement with customers. This means viewing every Facebook comment or Twitter reply – positive or negative – as an opportunity to make an impression on a potential customer.
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