My quick and dirty (although by no means complete) reason for why social media is important to businesses comes down to its ability to help company’s build consumer confidence. As promised, here are the top 5 ways social media contributes to small business and corporate America’s ability to create loyalty among their customers and create tipping points for prospects.
Reason #1 Heard You Today, Saw You Yesterday, I Expect To Find You Tomorrow
Customers see you everyday. As Woody Allen says, “80% of success is showing up.” Psychologically, we equate staying power with success and we tend to trust those we perceive as successful.
Reason #2 Honey, I Just Need You To Listen To Me…
Customers like to share their opinions. But they love to be listened to. In Bill Cates book Get More Referrals Now, he says that 95% of customers who have a complaint about a business or product will buy again simply because their concern was listened to and responded to quickly.
Reason #3 She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not
Social media tools allow for near-instant feedback. As a business owner, wouldn’t it be fabulous to know what your customers think of you and be able to respond to their needs immediately? That’s what I call service.
Reason #4 Ready, Aim, Fire…Try Again
Social media is a great platform for showing customers that you care and that you make changes to your business based on their opinions, needs and wants. Everybody’s human, businesses included, and nobody expects you to be perfect. Customers DO however, expect you to admit your mistakes and learn from them.
Reason #5 Oh You Mean People Actually Run This Company?
Finally, engaging the world through social media helps to build trust by giving businesses (and here I’m talking to the humans behind the curtain) the opportunity to step through the veil and connect to customers and prospects as people rather than through the almighty corporate brand identity. I mean really, wouldn’t it be great if he next time you bought Tide to think to yourself, “Wow, I sure do love that mountain fresh scent Pete picked out for this new detergent line, I hope my daughter likes it as much as his” as opposed to “ahh, another hard earned dollar given to the faceless corporate machine.”