How To Flirt With Your Customers On Different Social Media Platforms

5 min read

Did you know that 80% of companies believe that they deliver great customer service but only 8% of customers served by these companies share that exact view? Here’s how to fix this.

Choose the right tool for the job

According to Statista, Facebook has over 1.5 billion registered and active accounts, whereas Twitter a little over 320 million. Instagram, on the other hand, managed to get more than 400 million users.

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From this alone we can draw a simple conclusion – Facebook is still the leading social media network, and it won’t change anytime soon. It is considered to be the most important asset for social marketers anywhere. It’s good for pictures, for talking with your clients, for posting updates. Basically – all in one. If you were to use only one social network, that should be your pick.

As for the other networks, you want to be where your audience is. That’s it. You don’t need, nor want, to be everywhere.  Want an example?

Let’s say you run a small bakery which is trying to build its online presence. Let’s assume that you want to reach individual clients. Maybe a few schools and preschools in the area. Why on earth would you need to be at LinkedIn?

Stop trying to be everywhere, especially if you’re just starting to build an online presence. Focus on few chosen networks and work hard on maintaining a great communication with your potential customers.

Let’s Do A Quick Profile

Even before discussing choosing the best communication form and the type of language, you should know where to speak it. Let us get right to it then:

What’s Facebook for?

As mentioned above, Facebook is the essence of building brand awareness, loyalty, and reputation. If you do provide interesting, engaging and informational content, you’re bound to be a success. With over a million links shared every 20 minutes, over 50% of the community active daily and almost 50% of 18-34 year-olds checking Facebook the minute they wake up, you have at your disposal one of the most effective marketing tools on the planet.

Attributes:

  • One post reaches lots of different people;
  • A possibility of engaging in long conversations;
  • It builds a base of potential customers;
  • Makes it possible to provide expert customer care instantly.

What’s Twitter for?

On the other hand, there’s Twitter. The best platform for real-time and guerilla marketing, with conversations that are distributed across the entire network. People come here to discover what’s happening in the world right now. To share information instantly. What’s beautiful about that, is that the type of business that you do doesn’t really matter. You can run both a corporation or a small design studio, and still benefit from building meaningful connections.

Attributes:

  • Great for spreading short bursts of information about special offers;
  • Discussing a topic with shorter lifespan that on the ones on Facebook;
  • Putting up a short video through Vine;
  • Spreading the conversation using #hashtags;
  • Engaging in conversations not limited to your own portfolio of products.

What’s Instagram for?

For pictures of food.

Not really.

Instagram allows you to build a perfect visual image of not only your products, but the entire company. Whereas on Facebook you mostly provide customer care, and on Twitter you engage in conversations not limited to your own company, the Instagram account lets you tell the story using photos. It is the perfect place for creative context, as people come to Instagram for visual inspiration. If you, as a brand, will manage to provide it, the people will want more.

Also – Instagram is considered to be the king of social engagement. In 2014, its per-follower interaction rate was estimated at 4,2%. Nowadays it dropped significantly (2,2%), but it still is miles ahead of other social networks.

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But not every business might find Instagram to fit their profile. Starbucks and Red Bull might seem perfect for a visual medium as it comes naturally to them. To be honest, they wouldn’t even need an idea for engaging people (although it’s great that they have some interesting ones).

Now, imagine a bank that is trying to share their view of the world through the cameras’ lens. It’s doomed from the start. A bulletproof strategy is needed here. What for, who for and what content will be shared – these are the questions that have to be answered before even considering starting an Instagram account.

Attributes:

  • Ability to inspire people in a non-direct way;
  • Best for telling your story through images.

A Non-Obvious Strategy

Every tool from the listed above might be considered as a weapon of choice for calling to action. Social Media Manager at Pizza Express, Tim Love, has his own strategy for Twitter: “Vine integration with autoplay means we are able to produce lovely short clips of food that’ll hopefully capture a follower’s attention, with him or her booking a table or checking out our latest offers”.

Facebook, on the other hand, was quite useful for LOT Polish Airlines. The idea for #KISSaLOT originated with DDB and Tribal agency from Warsaw, and the campaign itself credited with more than $300,000 worth of free media attention. It was also a Facebook frenzy back in the day. But what was the idea about? LOT put mistletoe on its planes and asked people on the ground to track the flights. Whenever they found one overhead, they were encouraged to kiss. What’s worth pointing out is that LOT targeted Facebook ads at people in different cities when their planes were up in the air.

A great Instagram idea comes from Mercedes-Benz. The company launched a campaign that allowed its potential customers to customize a car directly on Instagram.

This creative idea brought Mercedes over 100,000 likes and more than 20,000 new followers. Also, the video above was put on Facebook in order to convert and interest the users.

What About Cross-Posting?

That’s a simple one, actually. Plenty of networks and post-scheduling apps allow you to post the same content simultaneously to different social media accounts. When uploading a picture on Instagram, you can post to Facebook and Twitter with ease. As you should.

Watch out for one thing, though. While on Instagram, you can use as many hashtags as you like while keeping the description of the picture as short as possible. You can even post it with no description at all, flooding the photograph with hashtags. It will work for your fellow Instagrammers. It won’t fly with the Facebook community. They’ll know that you took the easy way out and cross-published the post out of pure laziness. They’ll know that you don’t really get the diversity behind various social media platforms.

And you don’t want them to know that.

There’re two options. You can either individually profile the content to suit each of the networks or keep in mind that what works on Instagram or Twitter might not work elsewhere.

Here’s an example: while posting on Twitter, some of you might include a shortened link in the middle of the tweet. By doing so, it will be much more visible. What’s the purpose of applying the same practice on Facebook? Absolutely none. Nada.

What you could try is promoting your idea on one platform using your other profiles – just like Mercedes did. You launch something at, say, Instagram. Then, you spread the word at Facebook and Twitter.

All in all, remember that engagement is something that is earned, not given. The more work you put in crafting great posts according to the standards of each medium, the more positive response you’ll get.

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