By now, most of us know of dozens of brands that are successfully leveraging social media. We've read the stories and reviewed the case studies on some of the more successful efforts. What we see in such examples is an end result of a very well thought out strategy. But how did these brands start out in social media? More importantly, how did they scale to the level of success they now enjoy?
Scaling your social media efforts takes time and a steady focus on sticking to an operational plan. Whether you are just entering the social media ecosystem or have been a part of the landscape for a couple of years, there are four key components to scaling your social media efforts, which, not coincidentally, all start with a "C."
Customer support
From the moment people began to buy and sell goods and services, there has been a need to address customer support. Customers in need of service and support have moved from having to visit the merchant, to writing letters, to phoning them to, very recently, addressing their concerns via the internet through email and chat.
Through this progression, customers have learned to choose the easiest and fastest route to get their concerns addressed. Whether or not you use social media for customer support now, as you expand your social footprint, you will need to address scaling your support teams to handle what will be a very likely increase in inquiries, complaints, and comments coming through the social media channel.
The good news is, this doesn't usually happen overnight. It takes a while to scale your audience via social media and so the volume of issues to deal with will likely scale accordingly. But if you are not prepared in advance and instead try to deal with customer support issues after your audience scales up, you will likely have a large, vocal, and extremely involved audience turn on you within the very channel you are attempting to build. Customer problems are bad enough. Unaddressed customer problems can be a nightmare for your brand, especially in a medium that spawns the level of public interaction that social does.
Communication
Strangely enough, this is where a lot of businesses struggle with social media. For the longest time, communication between brands and consumers was one-way -- a monologue. We, as brands, didn't expect the customers to talk back. However, in the last 10 years we have learned that customers not only want us to listen, but they also want us to actively engage in an ongoing dialogue with them. This level of discourse can be intimidating for many brands, especially when making the commitment on a daily basis.
Before you ramp up your investment into social media, think about how your brand intends to interact with your customers in this channel. Map out a strategy to share information with your audience on a regular basis and create open doors where they can share their input with you. The best brands use social media as a conversation device where information and opinions are exchanged willingly and openly.
It's important to note that this process is more about "how" to engage than it is about what to say. Serious thought should be given to how you will address the audience and how it can respond. Additionally, you need to gut-check your company's willingness to allow that dialogue to happen and progress authentically. And be sure to remember that this should be a dialogue and not a monologue. You want your brand to be part of the conversation and not just the conversation starter.
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