Improving Your “Social” Skills
How sociable are you on social media? Your profiles and posts are part of your brand identity, creating or detracting from your company’s image, whether the attention you give them is zip or a whole lot more. So, what can you do to connect and communicate with customers?
Here’s an idea: build awareness of your company, your values, your service ethic – in other words, what’s important to you and how that is translated into the things you do for customers and your community. Another idea: be consistent across all your social media platforms.
With your consistent, awareness-building theme in place, you can share, advise, inform, applaud, encourage, support and caution… as the occasion fits. For example, let’s say you’re a contractor who appreciates your community and shows support by participating in canned goods food drives. Let’s see some pictures and posts of your presentations. Sponsoring little Timmy’s and Tammy’s tennis tournament? Those court banners weren’t made for hiding.
Are there good things going on that call for your comments and congratulations? Probably want to stay away from politics. But a local firefighter getting a medal, the chamber selecting a citizen of the year, or a humanitarian doing a good deed can be heart-warmers that hit home.
Frankly, you’d much more likely get a “share” and a “like” recognizing the local Little League team’s big win than you are about advising folks to change their HVAC filters regularly (not knocking the advice; just saying what saves on energy might not always warm the heart).
Back at the office – you care about your team. Your team cares about each other. You can plug your team-building activities. But do be careful. Don’t post a photo of a team luncheon while a customer has been waiting well past that service window. Feel-good posts don’t overcome neglect of your primary mission but could make things worse.