This is a guest post by Danny Wong from Blank Label Group.
Getting social is a bit hard for companies that are very hard pressed on ROI and are forced to focus all of their attention on improving the “numbers.” The fact is though, Social Media isn’t at all about the numbers and is a lot more about engagement. There is a ton of great value you, as a business, can get from engaging with your community.
Here are 5 intangibles of engagement that make Social Media entirely worthwhile:
1. Trust and Respect from your Community
When you take the effort to make those one-on-one connections, or even connections with multiple people at once, giving all of them a fair amount of attention, those people that you connect with will respect you more and are more likely to convert at a later point or even right away.
Of course, interactions like that should never be considered a sales pitch because Social Media and Sales are two separate worlds. Instead, those interactions should be simply genuine conversations that go wherever the wind takes them, and hopefully adds a touch of tasteful humor too.
2. Positive Word-Of-Mouth Spread
When you take the time to personally interact with your community via Social Media your community members will spread the good word to their networks, so the people they connect with may be hearing positive stories about your engagement with them. Your 2nd degree network will feel the positive effect of engagement too! Also, those types of positive referrals are invaluable, but if I were to put a more tangible dollar amount while throwing in some internet marketing terms (I’m an internet marketing geek, I know), I’d say those types of referrals are more valuable than a $5 cost-per-click.
3. Credibility, Comfort and Trust in Others Knowing you Engage
Just because you only engage with maybe 10 people a day doesn’t mean you’re only touching 10 people. Of course, you can think that maybe those 10 people will tell 10 other people causing some viral spread (like in example #2), but know that the people who you might never connect with on a personal level, but notice the Twitter and Facebook conversations, will take note of your engagement with others in your community and trust you off-the-bat.
4. Knowing your Customer Better
After numerous encounters with your flavorful community, getting to know them for more than their dollar value to your company, you actually get to learn a little more about them, including their likes, dislikes and concerns, making it easier for you to improve your business because of this really genuine and unfiltered feedback and this surveying of a sample of your community.
5. Clarifying your Brand’s Message
When you get to control the voice of your business outside of what’s on your website and what’s in the press, your community gets to know a little more about you in your natural voice, the way you want to present yourself, giving them a better understanding of your business, and how you operate. There are plenty more conversations to be had about your company’s industry, topics related to your brand, and things going on behind the business.
This is a guest post by Danny Wong – Danny works with his team to manage Social Media for Blank Label Group, which runs startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition and RE:custom. He’s also a blogger at HuffingtonPost, TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb.
