Businesses have not seen a more awesome medium than social media for reaching out to their audience since the dawn of modern commerce. It provides a more targeted, fun, engaging and economical way of promoting brands than any of the traditional approaches.  

While some are concerned with their ability to handle a huge volume of conversations directed at them, others are plain scared that it may open up a Pandora's box.

Despite this, many brands continue to stay away from it. While some are concerned with their ability to handle a huge volume of conversations directed at them, others are plain scared that it may open up a Pandora's box. This is particularly true of BFSI brands who have to deal with a variety of issues on a routine basis.

Staying away from social media for the fear of attracting negative attention is akin to wishing a problem away. We all know that it never really works. Your problems keep getting bigger and bigger if you ignore them. This is especially true of social media where negative conversations have a longer shelf life and spread faster than positive ones. Certain group of users take it upon themselves to alert others when cases of cheating, fraud, malice or injustice come to surface. In most these are rumors that deserve a tactful and measured response. In the absence of a counter response rumors quickly turn into facts.

Inaction thus becomes a form of action. In such cases the impact on brand reputation is remarkable and harder to salvage. The inevitable fallout of letting things get out of hand is a dip in sales. Competitors will of-course take advantage of the situation and claim to be polar opposite of the brand that has been sullied. The apprehension showed by brands who decide to stay away from social media is unfounded. No business or brand is perfect, they will eventually find themselves in hot water due to some issue or the other.

Social media engagement is a subtle way of creating brand loyalty and advocacy.

Social media offers brands a lot of opportunities to find a real connection with their audience. Brands who have embraced social media have discovered the benefits of driving engagement with their potential customers. Social media engagement is a subtle way of creating brand loyalty and advocacy. Social media users are more likely to believe in the opinion expressed by a sizable group of people even if they are unknown to them. This double edged nature of social media, which can favor or go against brands can be handled through active monitoring and response management.

Thankfully Social CRM offers an excellent choice for brands to deal with a barrage of complaints.

Social media has now become the platform of choice by aggrieved customers who don’t want to visit a brick and mortar touch-point or dial a toll free number. Thankfully Social CRM offers an excellent choice for brands to deal with a barrage of complaints. It helps them offer superior customer service at a pittance when compared to more traditional touch-points. Social CRM is a more economical option because the team required is smaller and response tasks can be efficiently assigned to relevant team members.

At Konnect Social we’ve enabled brands to get a 360 degrees view of their customers by allowing them to consume social data through our APIs. Our listening tool can easily integrate with our client’s in-house CRM so that relevant data is consumed by their response team. This enables the response team to view past complaints (offline and online) and resolution history. A variety of reports can be accessed through the tool to see how efficiently responses are being managed by the team. This kind of social data integration is non-intrusive as data is simply pushed into the in-house system. 

Brands should take advantage of the various tools available for managing social media conversations and thriving on social media, instead of being anxious about it.  

Have anything to add to this subject? I would love to hear from you 🙂