If you aren’t using social media to build credibility for your business and trust with your customers, you’re probably wasting your time.
Today, social media has evolved into a tool that businesses can use to grow, but without the correct strategy and approach, that growth simply won’t happen! So, In this blog post we will be giving you 5 tips that will help you earn new leads by leveling up your content, as well as your customer interactions on social media.
Post High Quality Content
At the bare minimum, you need to post high-quality content!
Our first tip is as simple as it gets, make sure you post high-quality photos with well-written promotional captions. As a business owner, your social media account is essentially your online portfolio, and just as a classical artist would only showcase their best work, you should too! So, as you organize and plan the content that you’re going to post, ensure that you only use the best quality photos to properly highlight the products or services that you offer. If you run a restaurant, you wouldn’t want to represent the food or drinks you serve with an unappetizing Instagram post!
However, just because you’re posting a great photo doesn’t mean that you can slack while writing your captions. On a similar note, you wouldn’t want to post a great photo just to leave a spelling mistake on display. While this wouldn’t be as obviously detrimental as running a restaurant and posting unappetizing photos of the dishes you serve, typos can still reflect a lack of professionalism. For some, a spelling mistake is simply human error, but for others, a spelling mistake can be an indication of how every other restaurant operation is being handled. So, before any social media post, remember to spell check! That way, you’ll minimize the odds that you lose customers by setting off red flags.
With that being said, in 2023 an unprofessional social media presence can be even more of a red flag than ever before! By now, smartphones can take incredibly crisp photos, and social media has been exponentially growing for almost 10 years… So, there isn’t much of an excuse to not use social media to its fullest potential, especially if you operate a business.
Share Customer Reviews & Testimonials
Want to earn trust? Show off what your satisfied customers have to say!
While you can post great pictures and write great captions to promote your business, for the most part, a recommendation from a 3rd party will always help you earn more trust and credibility. Unfortunately, since businesses need to earn a profit, the public tends to have a predisposition to more critically evaluate marketing messages that come directly from a company or organization… For example, we all know that a restaurant owner will have great things to say about their own menu! Luckily, it can be quite simple to overcome these biases. To earn more trust and credibility, you can use social media to share reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers. That way, your future customers can get the chance to learn about your business from a transparent source. When it comes to earning leads through social media, sharing what your customers have to say about your business is one of the easiest ways to build trust.
In addition, if you offer a niche product or service, reviews from people within the accompanying niche communities can be even more valuable to your marketing efforts and overall credibility. Unlike products or services made for the general public, niche products and services need to appeal to a specific target market, one that oftentimes has high standards and distinct needs. Because of this, reviews from niche customers are extremely valuable for businesses that offer specialty products or services. For example, if a powerlifter was looking for a strength training gym, due to their specific training style, discovering a gym that accommodates their needs can be significantly more challenging. In cases like this, 1 in-depth review from a fellow powerlifter could cut down research time, and answer all of the questions one may have to choose their next gym. So, if your business is one that caters to the needs of a niche audience, sharing customer reviews can be even more effective when it comes to gaining leads through social media.
Similar to using niche reviews to relate to a niche audience, reviews can also be used to showcase how a business caters to their different target markets. Let’s say that you run a hair salon, and your staff is well-versed in all types of hair. Since an Asian woman with fine straight hair would have a completely different set of needs compared to a Hispanic woman with thick and wavy hair, gaining the trust of these distinct target markets can be a challenge. In instances like this, customer reviews can showcase how your staff is capable of serving clients of all backgrounds with every type of hair.
By sharing your 3rd party customer reviews on social media, not only can you earn more trust from your general audience, but you can also make your business more appealing to specific niche audiences and target markets.
Show Off Your Awards & Certifications
Don’t be shy, if you’ve earned any type of award, don’t be afraid to show it off!
Not only is having an award-winning business something you should be proud of, awards can also help you earn more leads and customers. Similar to testimonials and reviews, the awards you’ve won are another example of 3rd party approval that can legitimize the products or services that you offer. For a business, support from a 3rd party is crucial as a biased claim is only worth so much.
For example, let’s say that you run a restaurant that genuinely serves top-notch food and provides top-notch customer service. Even if this were true, just like we mentioned before, everyone already expects a restaurant owner to have great things to say about their food and staff. This is why a claim is nowhere near as impactful as an award when it comes to earning trust and credibility, and most importantly, getting customers to walk you through your restaurant doors.
In addition to gaining the trust of your general target market, if your award is from a prestigious organization, their approval can be so influential that your business drastically changes overnight. Continuing with the restaurant example, while great marketing or a viral video can generate buzz, being awarded something like a Michelin Star comes with so much credibility that your restaurant’s popularity can instantly skyrocket. For your business, there may not be an award as highly acclaimed as a Michelin Star, but for the majority of industries, there are awards or certifications that are essentially the seal of approval, or gold standard.
Similar to how customer reviews are posted on social media to share an unbiased perspective, sharing an award or certification can also be used to gain customer trust. And, depending on the organization it’s from, an award can make your business one of the most coveted in its respective industry, or in your local area.
Demonstrate Authenticity
Authenticity doesn’t have to come from a 3rd party!
Although we’ve covered the importance of an unbiased perspective quite a bit, sharing customer reviews and awards aren’t the only way that you can make your business feel authentic online. Another way that you can create a sense of authenticity is by sharing a behind-the-scenes look at your business, as well as the people and story behind it. While sharing high-quality content is crucial to your professional reputation, ironically, sharing a more unfiltered view of your business can help you earn customer trust. When every post features professional photography and meticulously edited captions, your business can begin to feel less human, and in turn, less trustworthy. While this doesn’t mean that you should share a photo of the storage space you’ve been meaning to organize, sharing a glimpse of how your business genuinely operates can remind your followers that there are real hardworking people behind the professional presence that you’ve crafted online. For example, let’s say that you own a dance studio. Videos produced by a fully-fledged film crew and editing team would be great to demonstrate the top-level choreography you offer. But on the other hand, sharing iPhone clips that showcase all of the laughs and little mistakes that happen in class can demonstrate the human side of your business, the instructors that create a fun and welcoming environment. In other words, a business that feels more human is more trustworthy, and a more trustworthy business is more likely to gain leads.
Not comfortable with showing a less-polished behind-the-scenes look of your business? Another way that you can demonstrate authenticity, is showcasing the personality of your business and the people behind it. By straying away from posting content strictly related to the products or services you provide, you can essentially take your business from a faceless location where transactions occur, to a business built from passion supported by wonderful people. Continuing with the dance studio example, instead of showcasing a raw behind-the-scenes look at your instructors, you can set up a casual yet professionally produced interview. That way, you can share their unique personalities, adding a relatable human element to your social media presence, without sacrificing the cohesiveness that comes with posting consistent high-quality content.
If you want to earn new customers through social media, don’t be afraid to show off a little personality! Whether it’s an unfiltered BTS post, or a professionally shot team photo, reminding your audience that there are people behind your business can help you build trust in your community, eventually resulting in new leads and customers.
Engage With Your Audience
Don’t forget to engage with your audience!
If you’re already creating high quality content, sharing customer reviews and awards, and posting behind-the-scenes footage of your business, our final tip is to regularly interact with your fans and followers. At the start of this blog post, we touched on the natural hesitancy that comes with trusting claims made directly by a business or organization. In addition to the credibility-boosting tactics mentioned earlier, another method to overcome this distrust is to interact with your followers on social media. By taking the time to engage with your audience, your social media presence goes from feeling like an organization broadcasting messages to a crowd, to a person individually interacting with their followers. Although time-consuming, by communicating with your followers 1 on 1, you can develop a strong relationship that overrides the innate hesitancy that comes with trusting an organization.
In addition to gaining a baseline level of trust, you can also win back the trust of an unhappy customer by engaging with them on social media. In the past, a customer complaint would typically come from strongly worded emails and phone calls. Today, a customer complaint would typically come from a tweet, a direct message, or a comment on social media. In moments like this, how you approach the issue can make or break the relationship that you have with that customer. Thanks to social media, customers are able to directly interact with the brands they follow, and as a result, many will expect an immediate response as if they were directly interacting with a close friend. So, if you want to regain the trust of an unsatisfied customer, resolve the issue like a close friend would, and respond as fast as possible with a resolution that addresses every issue at hand.
Social media has completely changed how customers and companies interact with each other, and with that comes a new set of expectations and expected behaviours. By engaging with your followers with extremely fast and courteous responses, not only can you meet the needs of modern customers, but you can also earn their trust, and win them back if they didn’t enjoy their initial experience with your business.
In conclusion, social media has exploded over the last 10 years, and with that comes new opportunities to grow, but also new challenges to conquer. By following our guidelines, not only can you ensure that your high quality content develops credibility for your business, but your response to comments and direct messages will also help you develop trust with your followers and turn them into leads.
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