There are 2 things that can be considered crucial for business when it comes to social media. 2 aspects that when combined can provide real insight in to your customers minds, and benefits for your business - but before I get to those, read through my 4 targets for having the most optimal social media campaign in 2014.
1) Empathise with your audience
When a customer walks in to your shop, you instantly make some assumptions based on their age, gender, how they are dressed, what products they are looking at, if they are browsing relaxed, or if they have 3 kids dragged along behind them looking bored and frustrated. You get an understanding (rightly, or wrongly) about who they are and what they are looking for.
When someone comes to your online store you know a lot less about that person, they become just another number in your web stats, you can infer a little information about them, where they came from or what device they are using, but it’s not the same as speaking to someone.
Social media allows you to bring back a bit of the personal touch that online has been missing, you can interact with our customers at a personal level. So speak to your customers, build a relationship where people tell you what they need and how they feel, try to understand their needs and ask questions. Then use that information to help them, and improve your business.
2) Be interesting
When you are trying to build an audience you need to be posting something useful, you want your audience to miss you when you aren’t there, their lives would be worse if you weren’t part of it.
What you post doesn’t need to go “viral” or be an amazingly expensive or outrageous marketing stunt, it can be as simple as sharing industry news - for the casual observer this sort of information can be really valuable, and keeping people up to date with the interesting developments from your industry positions you as a useful contributor to the community, it shows you know what you are talking about, builds trust with your audience and provides a useful service - and if they are getting everything they need from you, there is no need to look for your competitors.
Remember, people aren’t likely to continue to follow you unless they are getting some value from the interaction they have with you. Social media is about retention, a long-term high quality relationship, not a one-night stand.
3) Be Interested
Likewise, you need to be following your timelines and what other people in your industry are saying, when they are posting useful content, engage with it, people are more likely to engage with you if you have done so with them, so take the first step and interact first, be brave!
4) Measure your engagement & continuously improve
I couldn’t be the data guy and not write a blog post about measuring your efforts.
With the points above, I’ve talked mainly about engaging with your audience, and how that should be your number 1 goal when using social media. So when we are measuring our campaigns, that is always my number one indicator. How many interactions did we have with people? Avinash lays out a great post for measuring social media quantifiably, with Conversation, Applause and Amplification Rates.
A quick summary would read like:
Conversation Rate: How many replies to your posts do you get (per post) - This shows you how interesting / controversial your posts are.
Applause Rate: How many people “Like” or “Favourite” or “+1” your post - this shows that people are interested in what you are saying and give it their backing.
Amplification Rate: The number of shares or retweets of your message to your followers followers. - This figure shows the content you are posting is of such high value people are sharing it with their audiences. Awesome!
In all 3 of these quantifiable metrics, you are looking for greater levels of interaction and audience participation. You can use tools such as True Social Metrics to measure these on a per-post basis, then after a while use the data gathered to see what type of content, times of day etc work best. For example you could see that posting pictures gets great “Amplification”, or that posting interesting facts from your industry gets more “Applause”. You can then use this information to make smarter decisions about what to post next.
So what are the 2 most important aspects of social media?
For me they are:
1) Get first-person feedback from your customers. The holy grail of your social media efforts should be talking with your customers. If social media gave you nothing else, this would be enough, getting into the mind of your clientele is the most valuable insight you can gain as a business.
2) Economic benefit, and that comes from building relationships to the point that your audeince are receptive to what you post, once you have achieved that, you can then incentivise them to take action and reap the rewards of a well planned campaign.
Now go and enjoy Christmas 
