Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media
As companies wrestle with the growing phenomenon of social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, which are an increasingly important feature in the lives of their customers, they seem to quickly understand that having a presence on these networks will give their brands greater prominence online. What many struggle to grasp, however, is that social media gives businesses an unparalleled opportunity to have a more personal relationship with customers.
Many of a company’s existing and potential customers use social media to organise their lives, and use them to put their wishes, needs and opinions out into the public domain, that a truly responsive and attentive business can get to know them better than ever before. Understanding what customers want is the most important step in ensuring that a company can satisfy their needs, and online social media networks are the ideal place to take that step.
Knowing what its customers want puts a business in pole position to provide the products and services they needs. Not only that, it enables a company to vastly improve the quality of advice and support for existing customers, who want to have a dialogue with businesses before and after the sale of goods or services.
Customer relationships are a two-way street, and through sites like Facebook companies can ensure that this dialogue takes place in a manner that is timely, relevant and satisfying for its customers.
Social media is a landscape that is constantly evolving, and which is shaped by the people who use it, all of whom are potential customers. By staying at the forefront of this process of evolution a business can greatly improve its performance in the battle for the prize of customers’ attention, but it can only achieve this if it understands the trends that drive social media. That means staying in touch with and attentive to the opinions and desires that consumers express through these networks.
For marketers, the value of spending on social media campaigns comes from targeting the right people through networks like Twitter, and getting that decision right depends on knowing where and when to promote their business in order to reach the right customers. Knowledge is power, and social media networks are a goldmine of customer information.
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