If you do nothing else with your company’s social media accounts, use them to provide excellent customer service.
When you find social media advice online, it’s almost always about developing great content. While content is indeed king, there are additional, equally important components of an effective social strategy. Great content, branding, community management and customer service are just some of those critical elements.
Even if your small business doesn’t have the bandwidth or interest in developing consistent, engaging content, at a minimum you should be answering questions and addressing feedback in direct messages and comments.
There will of course be off topic, spam and scam messages to sort through–and not every comment or DM requires a response.
Yet when a current or potential customer asks for help, provides constructive feedback, or has a legitimate question about your business, products or services, you should be providing clear, concise and thoughtful responses.
You should be treating your social media messages and comments the same way you treat phone calls, emails, and in person interactions. Provide the same level of customer service you would to someone physically standing inside your business.
You don’t have to be tied to a computer to do this: Meta’s Business Suite app allows you to manage messages and comments coming to your Facebook and Instagram pages. Most other social platforms let you manage business pages within their main app.
Ideally you should combine these efforts with a content strategy and branding but if you can manage to only nail customer service, your business will still benefit from social media.
