Connecting socially is becoming more and more critical for businesses. Building social relationships is a less expensive way to target prospective clients and an easy way to nurture potential leads toward conversion. Once you have found potential connections, nurturing and growing those social relationships is the next step.
Here are some ways to help develop those professional social relationships.
1. Provide Value and Demonstrate Interest
Everyday interactions in your professional and personal life may provide opportunities to connect with other professionals who share the same interests as you do. You may want to show interest in their business or provide them with more information about a product or service to offer more value to them.1
2. Consistently Engage
Once you have gained a prospect's attention, you need to continue to engage with them. More engagement may come from responding to comments and inquiries, addressing feedback, or providing follow-up content that they would likely be interested in.1
3. Offer Giveaways for Social Media Connections
No matter how large or small the prize, most people love giveaways. Using a prize may help to entice them to visit your social media. Offer prize entries for likes, follows, and shares. With this method, you may be able to reinforce your brand message, and your connections may share your company and brand with other potential buyers.2
4. Repost Your Customer-Generated Content
If one of your clients tags your product in a positive review or posts about it, repost the positive review on your social media feeds. It may let that customer know you appreciate their positive feedback and also help to promote your product. New customers are more likely to trust authentic feedback over business-generated content.2
5. Use Your Social Media Accounts for Customer Service
Many customers do not want to pick up the phone to contact customer service in today's world. Some don't even like to take the time to compose a formal email. By offering customer service help on your social media channels, customers may have an easy way to get answers to their questions without having to go through a more formal or time-consuming process.2
6. Provide Engaging Content
One of the keys to social engagement is knowing your target audience, including their wants and needs and the problems that they may face. Use this knowledge to generate content that may speak to and resonate with them. For longer content like blog posts, provide links on your social media for them to find out more information. You may also want to answer common questions that they may have.2
7. Post Consistently
Once you have attracted the attention of your target market, you want to engage with them consistently. Posting occasionally and not on a set schedule may cause your followers to fall off. However, if they receive regular content, they may be more likely to continue interacting with your company regularly.
Footnotes
1 11 Ways to Build Social Business Relationships, Socially Savvy, https://www.sociallysavvy.com/news/11-ways-to-build-social-business-relationships
2 4 Ways to Build a Stronger Brand-Consumer Relationship Using Social Media, Entrepreneur, https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/378954
Important Disclosures
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
All information is believed to be from reliable sources; however LPL Financial makes no representation as to its completeness or accuracy.
This article was prepared by WriterAccess.
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