Standing out above the rest II: Social media messaging and your business
The dawn of the digital age, where everyone seeks to be connected and the client journey has evolved. It is now more essential than ever to provide your client with as many avenues to keep in touch with your business as possible.
Social media pages are great for creating awareness of your brand, to keep engagement and show your client base who you are. The problem arises now with the fact that we are all too busy or distracted by all the different platforms competing for our attention.
As an individual I sometimes wonder if I need to have someone manage what I respond to.
Maybe as you read this you can relate too. I have more than five email accounts, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, Trello, Slack and a few other messaging platforms. Right now, I am your average client.
Your ideal client and social media
Your average client uses at least one social media platform and at least one messaging platform as well. They will most likely also access YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and have some subscriptions to other sites. The picture I am trying to paint for you is that we are all getting used to juggling and as a business, it is important to cover most of these platforms.
All the really big brands post on the social media platforms but more importantly they have embraced the social media messaging platforms. Snapchat, Messenger, WeChat, Line and Whatsapp all continue to grow and offer users various tools.
Why use social media messaging?
As a business you may question that you already have a Facebook page, why do we need to have a Messenger account as well? The answer for Messenger as well as most of the social media messaging platforms is simple and due to four of the most important functions.
1. Chatbots
Chatbots offer your business the unique ability to provide the client experience 24 hours of the day. The user has the ability to interact with your chatbot as if they are dealing with a salesperson or customer service team.
The response and action taken will be higher for your business, especially when the user initiates the conversation with the chatbot. Therefore, adding a chatbot although a little involved at the start, will allow for your business to have a full-time customer service and sales team.
2. QR codes
One of the social media messaging platforms strengths’ come from the ability to provide a unique QR code for each individual user as well as for businesses and their individual products. This ability to actively separate each activity and for users to be able to interact with the business around information or products and services they want to pay for makes social media messaging a must have.
3. Push notifications
The third factor for consideration for using social messaging platforms is that emails have been being used on a larger scale since the 1990’s. As you read this post there are over 187 million emails sent every minute, if you look at your mailbox you will see how many emails you choose not to open.
Emails are not as effective as they used to be, especially when a nurture sequence hasn’t been created. If you consider yourself, you will note how you respond to or at least review the notifications from the various social platforms. Even better would be to pay attention next time you are a restaurant or on a train, to how quickly people react to their phone notifications.
4. Mobile payments
The ability to transfer funds automatically is already well established in China (WeChat) and Japan (Line) between app users and with companies as well. Some American banks have collaborated to create Zelle and some of the banks in Australia now allow you to pay to a users mobile number.
PayPal now allows users to pay each other through their chosen social messaging platforms. Most interestingly, in developing countries where people live far away from cities with banks, mobile payments offer a perfect way to pay for products/services or transfer money to each other easily.
Apple and Google are currently creating systems to allow for their users to make mobile payments as well. Some of this functionality on the bigger platforms hasn’t landed in Australia yet but expect it soon. If you trade internationally then allowing for mobile payments in your other markets is very important for your business for the convenience of your client base.
The future of your marketing
An effective marketing strategy must now consist of social media messaging platforms as well. The beauty of the social media messaging when used effectively is that users will be able to interact with the business 24/7.
The information that is gathered from these plaforms can provide your business with feedback that allows for you to effectively plan your sales, events, competitions and even the offerings by your business.
Here is a list of some of the most popular social media messaging platforms:
- Messenger
- Line
- Viber
- Blackberry Messenger (BBM)
- Telegram messenger
- KakaoTalk
- Skype
- Snapchat
- KIK
As a business it is more important than ever to keep your finger on the pulse with social media trends. The fact that there are now almost as many mobile devices as there are people on the planet (7.2 bn to 7.6 bn respectively- January 2018) is more reason to pay attention to these platforms. With every passing day, these social media messaging platforms become more of a ‘must-have’ than a ‘nice-to-have’ for your business.
#socialmedia #mobileapps #marketingstrategy #chatbots #innovation
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