Creating Brand Loyalty with Social Media

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Today’s consumers seek more than just attractive deals; they want to support authentic and trustworthy brands. Consistent, exceptional customer care experiences are a key way to establish this trust, which brands can reap the benefits of. But how do you retain your hard-earned customer base over the long term? This article will explore how social media is a powerful tool for creating brand loyalty, along with a few examples of successful brand strategies to get you started.

What is Brand Loyalty?

First and foremost, brand loyalty refers to a customer’s commitment or attachment to a particular brand or company’s products or services. It goes beyond purchasing behavior; it involves a strong preference for a certain brand and a willingness to choose that brand over others with similar offerings repeatedly. In a crowded marketplace with countless products and services vying for attention, brand loyalty is key to securing your customers’ commitment. Below are brand loyalty strategies to consider implementing for greater reach!

Deliver Stellar Customer Care

Exceptional customer service demonstrates that a brand places its customers at the center of its operations. Customers who feel cared about and valued are likelier to be loyal, so brands should utilize social media as a tool for building and managing their community in a public-facing, authentic way. For instance, brands should monitor customer service inquiries on all social media accounts and respond promptly, regardless if the inquiry is positive or negative. Acknowledging feedback will not only enhance that particular customer’s experience but will also demonstrate to the entire online community that your brand takes their feelings seriously. Further, a customer care agency can be of use to ensure that no inquiry slips through the cracks. By engaging with customers on social media, brands can establish trust with a wide audience, leading to brand loyalty.

Utilize Word-of-Mouth

Digital word-of-mouth recommendations include praise on social media, user-generated content, and product or service reviews. The strong influence of word-of-mouth recommendations can be attributed to the perceived credibility and unbiased opinion that it offers to customers, in contrast with traditional advertising or promotional messages that often attempt to force a connection. With user-generated content (UGC), customers voluntarily share their experiences with a brand; leveraging the influence and credibility of satisfied customers to promote your brand is essential. Additionally, a negative review on social media can be advantageous when wholeheartedly addressed, which shows other consumers that you care. From posting customer reviews on your Instagram story, reposting a user’s praise, or commenting on a consumer’s post, there are many ways to engage in digital conversation.

Establish a Brand Voice

As mentioned earlier, brand loyalty can be attributed to a consumer’s emotional or personal attachment to a brand. Establishing this emotional connection comes with greater ease when the consumer feels like they are speaking to a real person behind the screen rather than a robotic, emotionless entity on behalf of a brand. So, finding your brand voice is a great way to give your brand a more personable and approachable feel. For example, if your brand exudes a light-hearted aura, sharing witty statements or memes on social media can demonstrate a consistent tone that aligns with your core values, which customers will recognize and respect. By humanizing your brand, emotional connections based on feelings of relatability and support can be established with customers, thus fostering a sense of trust and loyalty. Here are a few successful brand loyalty strategy examples to get you started.

The Golden Girls

The 1985 sitcom recently tapped into its audience’s emotional needs by creating a book titled “Quit Being an Idiot” that consists of all the best life lessons from the Golden Girls. The release was announced on Instagram; the brand leveraged this platform by presenting a unique offering directly to its existing fan base, demonstrating its effort to appeal to consumers’ interests and highlight the show’s most iconic moments in a tangible, exclusive format.

Galaxy Theatres

This movie theatre chain offers an in-app loyalty program exclusive to Galaxy Rewards Members. The membership includes unique offerings and discounts at no cost that appeal to the desires of movie-goers, such as a free candy at your next visit to Galaxy Theatres. Going beyond occasional discounts, this rewards program boosts loyalty by giving consumers an incentive to choose the brand over its competitors and a reason to stick around to earn more special offers.

BigStub

The ticket vendor BigStub uses its social media platforms to foster an online community of like-minded users with interests such as live events, sports, music, and entertainment. BigStub’s consistent and conversational tone can be seen in the caption of every post, which often prompts its audience to participate in the conversation via the comments section. The approachable tone of BigStub helps to foster brand loyalty through emotional connections based on shared interests.

In conclusion, brands can cultivate brand loyalty by appealing to customers’ ever-changing interests and desires. In today’s world, there is a large emphasis on the trustworthiness and credibility of product and service providers. By strategically using social media or working with a customer care agency, brands can highlight these sought-after traits, strengthen customer relationships from purchase to loyalty, expand reach, and ensure long-term success in the digital age.

The Importance and Benefits of Interacting with Your Social Media Audience

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Trying to figure out how to make your business’s social media perform? There are many facets to creating a successful social media account. On the surface, this can look like creating quality content, good branding, and posting consistently. But one influential area that may be overlooked is social media customer care and interacting with your social media audience.

The term interaction refers to communication between your business’s social profile and another individual. This may take the form of a like, comment, mention, or response to a review. Interacting with your social media audience is crucial in building customer loyalty, trust, and even exceeding customer expectations for your business. On average, almost 60% of consumers favor brands that respond to customer complaints and questions on social media.

Creating a responsive brand is key in maintaining your brand’s positive image while building customer relationships. Consumers that have positive interactions with a brand through social media are also more likely to recommend a business and increase their spending with them.

Social Media Customer Care – Benefits of Social Audience Interaction

As an agency that specializes in social media customer care, we understand the importance of interacting with your social media audience and have the expertise to help your business thrive. We’ll help break down the different types of interaction to ensure that your business is connecting with your audience.

Keeping Customers Happy

Customer service is crucial to keeping customers happy. Because social media accounts represent your business as a whole, there may be concerns brought up by customers regarding your business. It’s important that customers feel like their concerns are recognized. Additionally, neglecting to respond to customer concerns can negatively affect a brand’s reputation. Escalation Management is the process of concentrating on customer concerns and addressing them in both an appropriate and effective manner. As a rule of thumb, a business should try to practice empathy in their response and direct the concern to be answered by the correct department if necessary. Because two-thirds of people expect a response within the same day from businesses on social media, it’s important to respond to the most pressing issues first, while still maintaining a timely response for other concerns. Hens Nest Cafe Twitter Response for social media customer care

Closing a Sale

Interaction with a business’s audience can also be the factor that leads to closing a sale. When customers ask questions about your product, it’s important to respond to their inquiries quickly. Failing to respond in a timely manner can result in your customer losing interest in your product or service, or even potentially moving to purchase from a competitor.

Person Using Phone for social media customer care

Responding to Comments

Responding to comments is a simple but effective way to create meaningful interactions with your customers through social media. Acknowledging the positive experiences customers have with your brand is a great way to let your customers know that your business values their feedback. Making these positive experiences public also helps other customers build trust in your business and demonstrates your brand’s active listening. Even if a comment does not have a particularly positive or negative connotation, engaging with your audience in the comments is a great way to help them build a stronger bond with your brand.

hens nest cafe instagram comments for social media customer care

Creating a Successful Social Media Strategy

Overall, when interacting with your social media audience, it’s important to build a strategy to tackle responding to different situations. Creating consistency in your responses will create more ease for your team and project a voice that aligns with your business’s brand. As an agency that specializes in building effective social media strategies, Bright Age recognizes the importance of social media customer care and can help your business. Through interacting with your social media audience, you can build connections with your customers that lead to a more engaged audience, increased sales, and increased customer loyalty.

Why Online Reputation Matters for Businesses

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In the previous age of marketing, people would hear about businesses solely through word-of-mouth or through reviews in physical publications, such as newspapers or magazines. However, as marketing has shifted into the digital age, so has the culture of reviews, and ease of access to reviews has especially been impactful. Now more than ever, reputation management on the digital forefront is critical for businesses, especially smaller and newer ones trying to get their foothold in the market. If this is something you’ve never given second thought to or considered as important, we’ll break down why online reputation matters for businesses and how to get started with implementing social media customer care.

Potential customers are paying attention to what others have to say about your business online, so you should, too. According to Forbes, 97% of customers use the internet to find a local business. Reviews are prominently featured at the top of search results, right underneath business details like hours and location, and when a consumer is searching “restaurants near me,” they’ll likely choose to visit the bistro with five stars over the café with three. In fact, 93% of consumers ages 18-34 use online reviews and ratings to inform their purchase decisions. You want your business to be that five star rated company that potential customers choose over lower ranking competitors.

Reputation management screenshot of Profiles in History Google reviews showing ratings and reviews

Futhermore, a good online reputation not only helps attract customers, but also potential employees. Job searchers lean toward applying to higher rated businesses, too. This can help to widen your applicant pool and, in the grand scheme of things, improve your business even more from the inside out.

In contrast with higher ratings attracting more business, low ratings can have a starkly negative impact. Half of consumers say negative reviews make them question the quality of a business. With that being said, you can run the risk of losing 22% of business when potential customers find a negative article on their first page of results. That number doubles to losing 44% of potential business with two negative articles, and nearly triples to 59% with three.

What’s the solution in order to take control of your digital narrative? Implement a strategy of online reputation management. If you’re just starting off, do an initial sweep of your content by going through the first few pages of search results relating to your business and remove what you can, such as outdated photos. Next, check up on the reviews customers have left you on platforms such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, or TripAdvisor.

If you find negative reviews for your business, don’t fret – here’s where social media customer care comes into play. Besides using ratings to inform their decisions, 30% of consumers also pay attention to whether or not businesses are responding to reviews. Implement a strategy of not only thanking customers for sharing their positive experiences, but also responding thoughtfully to critical reviews. Make sure you acknowledge the customer’s negative experience and offer your contact information so that the customer may speak further about their experience. Win that customer back by providing exceptional customer service, while simultaneously showing potential clients that you truly care for your customers and their experience with your business.

Social media customer care screenshot of Galaxy Atascadero Yelp Response showing customer feedback

Of course, you may still have trouble implementing these practices or even finding time to monitor your business’ online presence. Working with a digital marketing agency like Bright Age that has expert knowledge in reputation management can help you focus on the day-to-day tasks of running your business smoothly.