Here is a thing; social media acknowledges nurturing— regardless of your business. However, some of us have persistently been using automation instead of segregating users based on demographics, choices and preferences. Needless to say, automation is an overused strategy with companies blaring out tweets and messages in massive numbers. This is where businesses are fast losing the plot and falling back, in terms of customer engagement.
Social media automation is more like an epidemic which is fast targeting the marketing channels, in their quest for real-time engagement. However, things are fast changing over social platforms and customers are exceedingly growing intolerant towards automation as a marketing tool.
Overusing automation tools over social media can and is actually breaking your marketing game. To be precise, automation is more of an efficient way of sending out the required number of messages but not necessarily the most effective way. Automation tools do act fast and more often than not, these quicker tactics harm the organization instead of doing much good.
In this post, we will be enumerating the benefits of customer engagement over social media without option for automation tools. While it is effective to broadcast bulk messages, the idea here is to wait for customers to engage with your brand. There is no point blaring out direct messages, tweets and posts if the user isn’t listening in the first place. Frankly speaking, your audience is becoming numb to these broadcasts as every other business is opting for the same approach without dividends.
Here is Why Automation Kills Your Goodwill
Businesses are making all the noise and it is advisable if you can get past the same. Companies which are reliant on automation tools are bound to falter in the long run. The first thing which automation kills is your online presence. There is no point continuing with the business if customers are wary of your approach. Your customer base must relate to you as a person and not as a robot which sends out automated texts, regardless of the situation.
Automation, if used in moderation, can be a very effective approach. However, you must not look to include automated messages as a part of your social media arsenal. Once you have amputated DMs from the scheme of things, you must spare a thought for the scheduled messages. Treat them with moderation and not as something that fits every marketing slogan.
Even if you are scheduling messages, it is advisable to analyze each before sending out the same. Lastly, the scheduled content must be proofread in order to suit your reader base.
Moving Beyond Automation and Embracing Real Engagement
The idea here is to nurture your marketing plan by integrating automation with relationship marketing. The entire concept of nurturing is based on the caveats of engagement. Instead of just sending out automated messages over social platforms, the key approach should comprise of personal interactions and restrained scheduling.
Basically, there are two expert pointers for nurturing your posts perfectly, without relying solely on social media automation:
- Zero in on a good post and nurture the same for only seven days. This post will be ten times more engaging that those regular broadcasts.
- Next we come to the actual idea of engagement which concerns personal conversations, replying to comments and answering queries over social platforms. Unlike automation which sends out a common message to all customer queries, nurturing is all about building a personal connection.
How to Engage Customers Over Social Media?
So finally we have arrived at the actual point of discussion. To be precise, it all starts with nurturing which hardly requires 15 minutes on a daily basis. It all starts with your first follower, friend or subscriber. Irrespective of the platform, you need to keep an eye on the notification bar and reply to everyone who interacts with the concerned post.
Be it a retweet over Twitter or an organic appreciation over Instagram, the basic approach towards customer engagement remains the same. Only the nooks and crannies vary, based on the audience and the social platform.
To begin with, you need to target the preferred audience base and start pitching your posts to them. Next, you should tag influential individuals for making use of their connections. This approach is known as viral marketing and works well towards creating a brand name.
The subsequent steps should include promotions, sponsorships and even retargeting. You should be selective with your marketing approach, depending upon the platform which includes professional channels like LinkedIn and even messaging applications like WhatsApp, Kik and many more. The strategy to market must be so precise that it should cover everything— starting from social platforms to leveraging kik online along with its app based format.
Over LinkedIn, engagement should start from pulse posts as they can be accessed by public. Next comes messaging applications which mainly work via personalized photo and text sharing. The likes of Twitter and Facebook can be won over by an organic approach while Instagram and Snapchat need you to be creative.
Bottom Line
As a business, you need to strike the perfect balance between nurturing and automation for engaging customers. However, automation has its downsides and should be used in moderation. Nurturing on the other hand is synonymous to customer engagement and should be preferred over any other marketing strategy as social relationships aren’t built in days but need time to prosper.
