An effective social media plan can help you to better share your content with your audience and connect with them on a deeper level.
A solid social media plan helps CoSchedule to get 31.5 times more traffic than if they just share their content once and then forget about it.
How can you build a social media plan that works for you?
With Great Content Comes Great Responsibility
You must take responsibility for your actions if you have great power.
Content marketers are responsible for creating content that resonates with our audience, providing value, and driving conversions.
In content marketing, we have a lot of responsibility for creating content that our audience will find valuable and that will drive conversions.
With great content, comes great responsibility.
I know cheesy is not the best way to describe you, but you are the best possible person for content. It has a ring to it, right?
A great social media plan is one that is responsible and takes into account what kind of difference it can make for your audience.
Use A Content Sharing Time-Spend Algorithm
You should share your content for at least 15 minutes for every hour you spend creating it.
If no one can find your content, does it really exist?
In your content creation process, plan to set aside some time to optimize your content for people to find it.
Share What You Already Know Will Be Successful
The New York Times Customer Insight Group has provided some interesting statistics on why people share content. CoSchedule has just analyzed the psychology of sharing.
Use the information in this article to create a social media and content plan that is most likely to be successful.
Support The Things We Care About
When you share your content, you are helping your audience, friends, fans, and followers.
The majority of us share content to support causes we care about.
If you can imagine the power of the social Web being applied to a cause you support, then you can imagine how much good it could do. It’s better if you can create a cause for them to support.
Help Us Connect With Other People
Social media is… well… social. Make sure your content connects with your audience. And make sure your audience can use it to connect with others that are similar to them.
Many of us share content on social media because we feel the need to connect with others.
Help your audience help you. Your employees can be your best advocates and marketing tools if you create content that they will want to promote.
Help Us Feel Involved
Value your audience. And let them know it. Wouldn’t it be great to be a part of something that is really awesome – something that is much bigger than what you could accomplish on your own?
That’s what being social is all about. Most of us share content on social media to feel involved and connected with people we don’t usually keep in touch with.
Twitter chats are powerful because they allow your audience to lead the conversation with just a little direction from you. Or the power brand ambassadors bring to the table.
Audience engagement can take many forms, even something as simple as commenting on a blog post.
Help Us Define Ourselves
People want to share content that gives them purpose. A whopping 68% of us share content for this reason.
Think of thought leadership. people share innovative thinking because they feel a connection to the ideas and feel that they could improve upon them.
Some people make it known to their colleagues that they are reading up on innovation, making themselves seem like innovators.
Entertain Us
Give your audience something that they will enjoy sharing with others. Make sure it is something that is fun, interesting, or exciting. About half of all people share content that amuses them, according to data.
Think of content that’s funny, uplifting, or inspirational. Some brands are able to use emotions like these in order to make their content more relatable and easy to connect with.
We Like Videos, Too
Don’t get too stuck on images and graphics only. People like to share videos through social media, too.
Video is predicted to be the most popular form of content by 2017. 69% of all content consumed on the Internet will be video.
Yeah, yeah. Take or leave that stat.
Video and social media are effective tools. This is an example of an autoplay feature. Videos on Facebook that start playing when you swipe your screen is an example of an autoplay feature. Your newsfeed is probably full of hundreds of words, but this one definitely stands out.
A LinkedIn study found that YouTube videos that are shared on the site get a 75% higher rate than other types of content.
So videos and social media definitely play nice together.
You Can Create Great Graphics (Even Without Design Experience)
I refuse to believe that people cannot create graphics.
We are lucky to work with people who are passionate about graphic design. They make our work look great and are always willing to help out. But for those solo artists, here’s what you need to know:
First, here are three tools I use often to create visual content (and they’re super simple, too):
Canva is a great way to create visually appealing blog graphics quickly.
Skitch can help you take screenshots and edit them by adding annotations and comments.
QuickCast can help you record your screen and audio at the same time to create short videos.
And here are 5 more visual tools some rock stars have helped me find:
- Easel.ly makes creating infographics a breeze (thanks to Kevan Lee for the find).
- Clipping magic helps you remove the background of pictures with ease (thanks to Ian Cleary for the find).
- Fotor(Open Link in new window) is useful for making collages with text (thanks to Nicole Johnson for the find).
- Over(Open Link in new window) lets you take a picture and add text over it (thanks again to Kevan Lee for the find).
- Ribbet(Open Link in new window) is an easy-to-use online photo editing tool (thanks again to Nicole Johnson for the find).
There are many blog posts discussing the best visual tools for creating graphics for people who are not designers. find an internet tool that works for you.
How to Do Social Media Customer Service the Right Way
Before the internet, customers used telephone calls to seek help from companies. This was the fastest and most effective method at the time.
Customer service via telephone calls is quicker than postal service.
The conservative speed of the postal service has given rise to a saying: “they called it snail mail for a reason, after all.”
Email and the internet changed customer service by making it faster and more efficient.
When email became commonplace, social media interactions changed the way we communicate.
You can connect with anyone on social media in real-time, up to the second. That’s the new wave in forward-thinking customer service!
Social media customer service is a type of customer service that uses social media platforms to provide instant feedback and support. This type of customer service is typically used for photos, videos, or other media.
Furthermore, customers are often engaged with social media, and they frequently use it for other activities, such as interacting with their favorite brands.
This is why it makes sense for them to use Twitter as a platform to raise issues that they want companies to resolve.
These stats show why social media customer care is so critical:
- 1 in 3 social media users would rather have social media customer care services than telephone or email.
- 75% of people will likely post something positive about your brand if you make meaningful social media connections.
- If you give a positive social media customer service experience, 71% of your consumers will likely recommend your brand to others.
- Customers will spend 20-40% more if you engage and respond to them through social media.
- About 67% of consumers are seeking resolutions for issues through Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks.
What is Social Media Customer Service?
Customer service through social media platforms is typically done through a team of customer service reps that are assigned to monitor and respond to comments or messages left by customers on the company’s various social media pages. In some cases, customer service on social media platforms can be outsourced to a third-party company.
It’s a rapidly growing customer service channel that is crucial to the ecosystem and complements call-based customer service.
It covers support services before, during, and after purchase.
This also includes dealing with complaints, offering advice, responding to questions, and giving refunds.
Social customer service can either be handled by a dedicated social media support team or by the call center team.
To provide effective social customer service, companies use specialized training, workflows, and software to resolve customer issues.
Many social media platforms provide opportunities for customer service operations.
Many customers prefer resolving issues through customer service, so having an effective customer service is not only meeting customer needs but also gives your company an advantage over others.
Regulatory concerns, preserving brand image, and achieving optimum response rates are all things to consider when managing the unique complexities of this support channel.
Creating Your Social Customer Service Strategy
Before you add social media channels to your customer service repertoire, you need to have a plan for how social customer service will work within your organization as a whole.
A comprehensive social media strategy should feature these 6 key components for customer service:
Set up brand monitoring.
First, you need to set up a system to actively monitor your brand on the social media platforms where your customers can reach you.
You can do this conveniently using social media tools.
You can set up a stream for your brand that monitors any mentions of your brand with positive or negative connotations.
You can find questions people are asking about your brand by setting up a stream for content that includes your brand name and a question mark.
If you have multiple customer support channels, you can better manage customer complaints by identifying which ones are more pressing.
Determine what types of comments get responses.
Inevitably, you will not just respond to positive feedback while ignoring negative feedback.
Sometimes the way you manage a negative comment can make new customers want to try your business.
Many more comments than what your customer support team should handle will be received though social media is not a dedicated customer support platform.
Above all, avoid feeding the trolls.
This can be managed by creating a priority list so that your team can give extra attention to the most urgent and critical issues.
All team members should be trained on how to handle both positive and negative comments. Clear guidelines should be provided on what to say when responding.
Build a system to get questions answered quickly.
If you’re slow to respond to someone online, it’s as bad as not responding at all.
A carefully organized system is required for this, with dedicated social customer care member that handle social media issues and complaints and responding to them in a timely manner.
A system should be set up that takes all customer issues and puts them in one place. This system should also be able to take specific messages and assign them to particular team members.
Keeping all your social media platforms in one place makes it easier and faster to resolve customer issues.
Consider having a dedicated support channel.
In addition to having a dedicated social customer service team, you can have a separate customer service channel within the social media platforms.
Make sure your social media accounts have a link to your support profile so customers can easily find it.
This will make it easier to keep track of specific customer queries and also provide customers with a platform where they can check past queries that are similar to theirs.
A separate support channel will help divide your social media content marketing efforts and customer services.
Have internal best practices for responses.
Customer support isn’t just about solving customer issues.
It’s a key tool in building your brand image.
In order to provide great customer service, you need to have good practices in place within your company that go above and beyond simply solving customer problems.
Your responses should be consistent no matter who you are talking to.
Clear guidelines help to prevent INTENTIONAL or accidental bias in RESPONSES from your team members, which could give people a bad impression of your company.
Determine how you will measure and report on your efforts.
It is essential to measure and report your social customer service activities to evaluate your performance.
Customer satisfaction surveys can help you see how well your company is doing when it comes to customer service.
The data you collect and the findings you make can direct your efforts in specific areas that need greater attention. This way, you can focus on what needs to be improved instead of wasting time on areas that are already doing well. You might need more staff at some times than others, depending on the number of customer queries.
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