Social Media
Building and nurturing brand trust
Social media is a place to connect with your customers while building and nurturing brand trust. Businesses and organizations of all sizes should know social media isn’t just a platform for marketing and advertising; it’s a great space in which to build and nurture brand trust. The goal is to build on current relationships, increase customer reviews and referrals, and develop new relationships with people unfamiliar with your brand. Social media channels offer a vehicle to communicate your brand’s value and better engage with current and potential customers.
Nurturing trust through social media channels requires brands to find ways to have a free flow of dialogue and let people see who you, and your company, are. Showing your human side and increasing transparency builds confidence with audiences of all ages. Focus on fun, informative, simple engagement, be responsive to all customer communication, and find meaningful ways to show your social responsibility. These practices will ensure a consistent brand voice when responding to positive and negative comments across everything related to your brand.
Brands must find easy ways to create private and more intimate connections with their audiences without becoming overly intrusive. Ways to improve customer relationships will likely include building brand communities or groups where your message is relevant but where both your customer and you are receptive to direct messaging. For many organizations, direct messaging from customers through social media platforms has significantly reduced phone calls, emails, or website contact form fills.
For example, a Facebook survey of 8,000 people reported 69% of their respondents think the ability to send a direct message to the company helps them feel more confident about the brand. The goal is to give your current and potential customers more meaningful connections and a feeling of being heard and in an exclusive, safe environment.
An essential key to creating brand trust through social media is the trustworthiness of the content, how content is presented, and the opinions that are shared. Posting great content is also a way to build trust while positioning you as an industry authority.
Brands that do nothing but sell, sell, sell on social media will have much lower customer engagement than companies that educate, inform, entertain, share their passion for community involvement, values, and personalities. Don’t be afraid to show the human, personal side of your staff and business. Applauding continuing education, individual, sales, and other achievements are also excellent ways to show customers your company’s “true colors” while also building trust.
The last thoughts we’ll share relating to trust are specifically about content. Social media posts, websites, brochures and other materials should be error-free. If you cite sources in your content, then ensure the citations are accurate and where possible provide a link or tag to the owner of the content. Check all parts of your grammar, including spelling, punctuation, and sentence structure. Do not plagiarize content from other sources, and do not download photos from Google, Bing or other sites without proper permission, license or subscription.
Our ever-changing social media landscape can be an overwhelming or confusing place for many businesses. It’s important to know help is available when you need it.
