Your customers are your most valuable asset. They are the source of your revenue and relevance. Keeping them engaged and valued is crucial.
And one of the more effective of ways of doing that is via social media. Social media is a powerful way to recognize, thank and nurture your customers.
Customer nurturing is an effective means for improving customer retention, future revenue growth and growing your company's brand and reputation. And in today's digital age, there may be no more effective way to nurture customers than through social media.
Communicating with your customers through social media is a great way to stay
connected with them, keep them informed, and get them to revisit your website. 
Social media has several distinct advantages over other channels and tactics, mainly because of social media's immediacy, multiplier effect and global reach. Looking for other reasons why social media should be a part of your marketing and communications strategies? Here are six of them:
1. It's personal
With effective social media, businesses can have direct engagement with customers. This can happen via Tweet exchanges, Facebook responses, likes and shoutouts. By connecting directly with customers, your business becomes less of an inanimate, abstract entity and more personal.
2. It's meaningful
Using social media is a powerful way to recognize and thank customers. There are many different ways to do this. Some companies choose to recognize customers based on loyalty or longevity by offering them special perks available only via social media.
Others use personalized communication via social media channels that is not automated, but truly personal. Recognizing customers does not need to be an expensive endeavor. By creating a recognition plan you can effectively spread recognition throughout your social media channels and over time.
3. It's spreadable
One of the most powerful uses of social media is to spread information. Engaging a customer on his or her or its social media network activates the potential of viral spread. Connecting to a customer's network allows you to spread the goodwill, opening the possibility to further leads to pursue.
4. It's a service
In B2B relationships, social media is a powerful service. By touting a customer on your social media networks, you provide broad exposure to your followers and fans. For the customer, this is free marketing.
5. It's information
By engaging with customers over social media, your organization can glean extraordinary, actionable insights. In addition to quantitative information about click-through rates, likes and follows, nurturing customers via social media also provides qualitative information. Tracking and analyzing the narratives that occur on social media may provide customer insights not otherwise evident.
Consider what can be done with information about what customer nurturing elicits heavy and light responses, what issues customers engage with you on via social media, and the tone of those engagements. All of this information is keenly valuable.
6. It shows value
Customers can see the spread of social media posts, analyze the reactions and assess the impact of social media interactions just as you can. By being effective and transparent online, you demonstrate the value you place on customer nurturing. It also shows the value of your network and resonance within various social spaces.
Social media is where we are today. It's where your customers are too. By connecting with and nurturing them via social media, your customer retention rates are sure to rise.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can effectively leverage your Facebook communications, check out another one of our blog articles, "Are you making the most of your Facebook marketing? Here's how to tell."
For more insights on how an inbound marketing agency can help you untap the potential of social media, inbound marketing, and the science of customer nurturing, download our eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Hiring an Inbound Marketing Agency.
Mark Parent : December 19, 2016 3:25:03 PM EST
