Why is Social part of your Digital Transformation strategy? Why is Social so important? Social is the pulse of your customer and much more….
I have written much about Digital Transformation and want to set the focus here on Social and how Social is part of the Digital Transformation. Digital Transformation takes place bottom-up, not top down. There are 4 areas to think about around the customer centric approach, it’s Vision, Change Management, IT and Communication (see From “Digital Transformation” to “Internet of Things” with the Customer in the middle).
Social is the best starting point for your Digital Transformation.
A customer doesn’t care about channels, he cares about emotions, feelings and identification. So give your customer his satisfaction of needs. To understand him be there where he is acting, where he is communicating. To understand someone it’s needed to have a holistic picture, to collect as much data as possible. Many data you can get from Social. This is the channel where you can communicate with someone in both directions instead of just sending out marketing messages (advertising & content)
Some people’s life will take place within Facebook & Co, they post everything every time. So take part on their life and feel their emotions. If you combine what they post on Facebook with other data like pulse-data from their smart watch you are able to understand the emotions and the best time to address your message or just to get attention.
So Social Media is not just content marketing, tweeting or posting… You need to be social, start diving into your customers and feel them. Don’t use Social just as one digital channel. Implement Social into your digital transformation strategy, use Social to integrate into a holistic communication and interaction.
Social is not just Social, it can be the starting point for your digital transformation into a customer centric communication and customer centric organization.
Have you seen this both blog post already?
Social needs no KPIs to measure short success. Social is a journey where you can be the trusted advisor of your customer, where you can feel issues before they are coming up… With Social you can make a difference!
KPIs are important. Usually we are talking about short-term KPIs. It’s important to build a KPI route with several conversion stages.
- First contact (on-site or off-site)
- First interaction (posting, message, newsletter registration)
- Regular interactions
- Buyer
- Multiple buyer
- Spoke person / influencer
- High value buyer
- ….
This are just 7 conversion stages. Think about much more! Every conversion stage is a milestone a user reaches. at every milestone there is a different communication needed.
Just one example: If there is a problem with your product or service you offer, a customer who is in stage 6 or 7 in this example expects much more attention than a customer who is just in stage 1 or 2. A customer in stage 4 is happy with a product replacement by offering him 10% off, while a customer in stage 7 expects 50-100%. If you solve the issue for a customer in stage 6 quickly he will go out and talk positive about your help and attention. This is what you should reach and therefore you need to know at every time in which stage someone is.
You see Social is for getting information and opinions by other people… but it is also for getting support if a user contacts you directly on your Facebook page for example.
Work closely with your content department, your data management and have a look that everyone who is working within your Social department understands the company vision. These people have the direct contact to your customer, so listen to them and implement them in your strategy. Customer will feel their passion, their heart and this is what builds trust.
To match content with your campaigns, the milestones of an user and the individual needs content should be build out of blocks which can be used and /or ordered case by case.This makes content usable in an 1:1 communication.
Bots or chat bots are coming up more and more and everyone is shouting out that they are the future. They can be a curse and blessing. They can help you but be careful and don’t lose the personal contact to your customer. Here’s an interesting article about “Social Media Marketing Strategies With Chatbots“.
To sum it up integrate Social into your entire communication strategy and stop thinking in channels. Especially Social is not a channel. Social is where the life takes place… and this is people business.
