As a business, maintaining a social media account comes with different rules and best practices than those of running a personal profile. Though platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn give you the valuable advantage of being able to directly engage your customers, it’s important to retain certain tenets of professionalism when speaking under your company name: Finding the right blend of informative and personally appealing is what tends to give businesses the positive feedback they desire. Here are three tips:
Respond In A Timely Fashion
This may seem obvious, but its a best practice ignored more often than you’d think. If a client or potential customer reaches out to you with a specific inquiry or comment, they’re expecting a timely reply: Don’t leave messages sitting in your inbox, particularly if your page is public and is seen to be regularly posting. Its also important not to ignore comment threads on individual posts, which can be easy to lose track of as they’re replaced with new ones. Even if you don’t have an immediate answer to a question you’re posed, its always advisable to let the person know that you’re in the process of following up. Punctual response is always appreciated, and is simple as a few keystrokes.
Remain Calm
One arguable drawback of social media’s personal nature is that things can get publicly (and easily) combative in the event of an upset customer. When put on the spot by someone unreasonable , it’s important to keep your cool and remember that your entire base of followers are watching. Show your audience that you’re able to deal with conflict in a collected manner, and they’ll respect you for it. If all else fails and the person is antagonistic, you can always block or report them to the platform administrators. The key is to always be aware of your audience and never risk presenting yourself as unhelpful or rude.
Speak Succinctly
The reason platforms like Twitter are designed around brief messages is because they operate on the assumption that web users have short attention spans. If you can transcend your point in fewer words without losing key details, you’re in a better position for your audience to stay engaged throughout a given post. Its fine to expand on customer queries during a private message exchange, but it’s best to write your public exchanges in an uncomplicated manner, under the assumption that your answer will be useful to many people watching.