Student Name: Douglas Maslowski

Student Number: 2158257

Tutor: Jeff Taylor

Assignment: Effective Engagement with Social Media

Introduction

I have chosen to do this Assignment title as I feel I have a keen interest in Social Media and how effective engagement can be used to help businesses in a positive outcome using social media sites on the internet. I believe that social media engagement is the new marketing in a society that has excelled itself technologically allowing marketing to be no longer about mailing campaigns capturing the consumer’s attention even though this may be affective for certain brands, more and more people just want the basics: real human relationships which I believe social media brings.

Effective Engagement in Social Media

Thanks to social media sites, consumers are talking to the brands more and more and these brands are responding to people, something that would have been difficult to do to without the help of social media. What’s more to all this is that these brands are answering the questions from consumers and are going beyond that by building relationships. Because of this engagement through social media, customer service is now becoming the new marketing. Social Media Engagement is more than ‘just’ interacting with a community, it’s about listening to what your audience is saying and acting upon it. If people are unhappy with certain services or products, companies can easily find out about it without having to scan the social web but by having it scanned for them by using social media monitoring and management tools because they store search results in one manageable location allowing companies to filter the results such as locations, author, which items people like, which they don’t etc. By automating the work like this, companies can concentrate on the social media engagement and what people say about the company, allowing them to act on it and interact with their online community.

Also, I believe that engaged consumers are loyal, if people relate to a certain brand, they are more often than not to keep buying from that brand. I think this because having one loyal customer in social media means you can reach their entire network, if they are happy with the product and services, they will spread the word making others in there network aware of the businesses brand making them somewhat salesman for that brand. Having a consumer as an advocate for the brand helps boost the offline word-of-mouth, which in essence, markets the brand to the people that cannot be reached via social media engagement, which wouldn’t have been achieved without social media engagement.

Social media engagement can be used to encourage customers to leave testimonials on the company website, this is a great practice for businesses as the right testimonial gains trust with the consumer and creates credibility with prospects. It clearly shows the website visitors that other people have dealt with the same issues and was able to overcome them by using the product of the company.

Testimonials could be used even more efficiently with social media engagement by creating a page for cases by showcasing complete case studies by making the content come more to life by adding quotes, feedback, videos etc. Building a showcase is a way of extending the brand which is an important element of marketing because people get to know about the brand from someone else’s prospective.

Social media engagement is the new marketing because businesses talk to customers to create a genuine relationship. Businesses help them with their questions, listen to their feedback, and show gratitude if the customer is help supporting their brand, this is helping in gaining more sales and higher customer retention. As I previously mentioned before, Customer Services is becoming Marketing in Social Media Engagement, and the core to the social media customer services is replying to the questions that people are asking about the businesses brand. By the businesses answering the customer’s questions about their brand is a proactive approach turning customer services into customer engagement.

One of the most recognisable Customer Engagement approach through Social Media Engagement is through Twitter. Some brands reply to all social messages where some don’t. If businesses use a social media tool they can decipher which social messages mention the brand or which people are just tweeting about the business which can help businesses reply to the tweets being posted on their Twitter page. If people like the brand and compliment it, it is easier for the Businesses to thank them and take the time to share their positive experience with the brand.

Effective Social Media Engagement cannot be achieved to its full potential without using Social Media Management Tools. One advantage to management tools in social media is ‘automatic

routing’; for example, you can filter all messages in a foreign language and get them automatically sent to staff who are assigned to deal with that language. In the same way, you can route all messages by certain authors, certain topics, sentiments etc. The Management Tools also helps set up notifications when an influencer mentions the company or the companies brand, it is always good to respond quickly to consumer engagement, if it’s positive the business can re-share the post and thank them, waiting several hours to do this doesn’t work in Social Media Engagement, the effect will be a lot less powerful. Making sure businesses set up notifications using Management Tools can help avoid crisis and helps them fully benefit from a positive post.

Social Media Engagement is also good as it does not produce canned responses. Customers feel more in the spot light from the company if they send a personal message to the customer helping build the relationship. Effective social media engagement is taking away the old scripted messages they used to get through email which didn’t touch personally with the customer where Social Media now allows the businesses to do this. Businesses however can use canned responses for bits of information they have to share over and over again. If there are some FAQ’s that keep popping up to that business, they can make the link to the FAA’s so they can easily introduce it in their reply to that customer, they add their own words to the reply and it still shows that personal engagement with that customer making them feel in the spotlight through Social Media.

Conclusion

Social Media holds a huge power for brands and it should not be neglected. Social Media is becoming an invaluable Marketing Tool and the sooner it is adapted the better it is for business. Social Media helps interact with the consumers more quickly and efficiently than email would. It also puts a personal touch from the business to the customer making the customer feel like they are in the spotlight with Social media engagement, which is proven affective for businesses in more sales and customer retention. Without effective social media engagement, businesses would find it hard to reach all customer queries in relation to the brands and other questions they may have. Social Media engagement also allows the customer to find out more information about the product easily online through social media making an advantage in more sales for the businesses, customers no longer have to lookout for adverts in magazines or papers or companies having to send out mail marketing campaigns hoping to capture the customers interest, which has increased in acquisition sales as well as relying on customer retention. Without social media engagement none of this would be available to do for both the customer and the business.

Learning Log

I have learnt that Effectiveness in Social Media Engagement is important to Business because:

People long for genuine relationships with brands on social media Engaged consumers are loyal and become brand advocates Building online relationships with customers is becoming the new face to face Brand advocates market the brand through testimonials, reviews and even word-of-

mouth Social Media Management Tools saves on valuable time Social Media Customer Services is becoming the new marketing. Customer Engagement is having a positive feedback and allowing you to spread over

one person’s whole social network.

Referencing Log

While writing this assignment, I used a lot of my own initiative and own thoughts and logic in why I think Social Media Engagement is effective for businesses. I did use Google Scholar and read through the following articles:

“The Next Generation of Business Engagement” written by Dave Evans who believes social engagement is the next generation of marketing.

“What is Social Media” by online magazine “Mayfield” who touch on the subjects of how Social Media Engagement can be used in many positive ways, one being customer engagement by companies.

“From Social Media to Social Customer Relationship Management” by C Hellar Baird which explains how Social Media Engagement can be used to build relationships with customers giving a personal touch to the customer making them feel special by the business.