Connecting with customers on social

CONNECTING

WITH CLIENTS USING SOCIAL MEDIA

Ran Janda explains how to connect with clients online…

YOU may find that fewer people are seeing your social media posts. That’s because organic social media reach is in decline. It’s simply not as easy as it was before social media platforms started to utilise paid advertising. It is no longer beneficial for them to show non-paid for posts to many people since it doesn’t make them money. But it isn’t all doom and gloom and there is still plenty that you can do to increase your number of followers, encourage engagement and most importantly, turn followers into fans who won’t think twice about purchasing your products and services.

Become friends with analytics

You don’t need a degree in data analytics to understand how your social pages are performing. You don’t even need to purchase additional software to analyse the results. What you do need to do is keep an eye on your posts’ insights, this will show you how well each post is performing. After monitoring insights for a few months, you can start making assumptions such as what posts create the most engagement, what images lead to the most likes, posting on what days and times lead to the most traffic. Just noticing these simple things, can help you turn your page from low performing to a hive of activity that leads to more customers and clients.

Posting without measuring results is like throwing mud at the wall and hoping it sticks. Data allows you stay informed so you can stay ahead of the competition.

Action:

Schedule around an hour a week to review your posts analytics and insights. Make note of recurring themes where you see high engagement so it can help you plan for future posts. Also, are there any specific days or times you post that show increased activity? Make a note and test this theory the following week to see if you get similar results.

Meaningful and informative

Understanding what your audience wants to see is essential in creating an effective social media strategy. Meaningful means that it relates to you, something you would talk to friends and family about. Informative content will be interesting to your followers. These will obviously vary by user; however, you should be well versed in your audience’s interests and behaviours so tailoring posts to their needs is something that should always be front of mind.

Action:

If you haven’t already, do some research on followers of similar accounts to better understand what your audience are engaging with. Make a note of the types of posts that receive the most likes and comments and build them into your strategy.

Engage with Your Audience

If someone takes the time to comment on your post, don’t waste the opportunity. Making them feel heard significantly increases the chances of them engaging with you again, which in turn will increase the chances of them buying from or booking with you.

Action:

Before publishing a new post, review the last one you posted and like and reply to every comment you received. Building a habit like this ensures that you remain consistent with your replies.

People buy from people

People connect with people more than products and services, so who is the person behind the posts? Build trust by showing your face and personality so people can see that you are not a robot. This is where posts with a photo of you in or a short and informative video can really help to boost your profile, highlight your expertise in your industry and turn more followers into customers or clients.

Action:

Pick a theme and try it out for a while, for example you could start recording a short video every Friday highlighting a self-care or wellbeing act that you will be doing over the weekend. If your followers decide to do it too, then ask them to comment on the post afterwards and let you know how it made them feel. Keep the suggestions simple, you don’t want to suggest anything too time consuming or that requires a lot of equipment. If the posts are meaningful and informative for your followers, they will start to look forward to your Friday suggestion and your videos will start being shown to more people. Consistency is key here, if you go on holiday for 2 weeks, then use a social media planning platform to schedule in the posts before you leave so you don’t disappoint your fans. Don’t forget to respond to any comments as soon as you can.

Calls to action

If you want your followers to respond in a certain way, then you need to be specific. Creating polls and asking questions are a great and easy way for followers to engage with you and see how other followers feel about the topic in question. It’s also a great opportunity to learn more about your audience. Perhaps you’re struggling on what to focus your next blog post on, create a poll and get your followers to decide. This way you are creating content they want to read.

Action:

What would you like to learn from your audience? The opportunities here are endless. Take some time to write a list and keep adding to it when a new idea pops into your mind. This way, you are never short of questions or content for polls.

Be the authority

By being seen as an expert in your industry will go a long way in getting sales and bookings. An easy way to do this on social media is to ask clients if they can share feedback on their purchases or treatments, so you can post it on your page. Offer to keep it anonymous if they prefer, but by showcasing the results your clients achieve, will help inform new clients of what to expect.

Action:

Send an email out to your customer or client list and ask if they would like to share their experience with purchasing from you or from working with you. If you want to incentivise them, you could offer a discount on their next purchase or booking. Provide guidelines on what you would like them to address in their feedback. The guidelines will be based on what your audience will likely want to know about working with you.

Using social media to create loyal fans who turn into customers or clients is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires posting regularly and consistently to build relationships with followers. Understanding what your audience want to see from you, is the first challenge in deciding what to post. Once you are clear on this, then building a strategy becomes easier. By responding to every comment to ensure that followers are seen and heard will establish a level of trust that is hard to achieve from a website alone. By showing the person behind your business, you humanise your work and increase the chances of people reaching out to you to enquire about your products or services. n

i

RAN JANDA is the Founder

of www.holisticroom.com,

a holistic health booking platform that

promotes the services of practitioners

across the UK. Email Ran at ran@

holisticroom.com with “Practitioner

free trial” in the subject line to try us

out for free!