In September, I wrote a blog post entitled, "Sneak Peek: Microsoft Plans Exciting Updates for Dynamics CRM." In that post, I covered several social media tools that were going to be added to and now that those updates are live, I thought it was time I dedicated a post to helping our readers get the most out of their social media efforts.
What follows below is a list of general tips and tricks companies can use to improve their social media engagement. They've been collected through my own experience managing Intelligent Technologies, Inc. social media profiles as well as two articles on the subject, "" by Newslab and the Mashable article, "." So, if you're looking for further reading on the subject after you’ve finished this blog, each of these would be a good place to start.
3 ways to increase your business’ social media engagement:
- Use your social media profiles as an opportunity to become a resource for your followers. By that I mean, avoid just pushing out canned messages on your social media profiles. Instead devote some of your posts to making sure that your followers understand that there is the human behind these accounts to whom they can go and ask questions.
- Once you begin receiving questions from your followers, make sure that you answer them in a timely manner and that you have a clear pipeline set up for handling these interactions .This is particularly important if your business is technical in nature and the person who regularly checks your social media accounts may not have the specific knowledge needed to handle your clients’ or prospects’ questions themselves. Make sure they know to whom they should forward these inquiries and that those individuals understand how they need to be handled.
- Give back, reciprocate and acknowledge the useful contributions of your followers. This can be achieved by re-tweeting a message if you're using twitter, or posting the message you find interesting to your own Facebook wall or LinkedIn status updates with a mention of where it came from. Furthermore, this may seem counterintuitive, but asking for re-tweets when posting on twitter can actually be an effective method of increasing engagement. Research shows that when you add “please RT” to the end of the message 51% of followers will do so.
As you begin to enjoy the latest updates to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and explore its capabilities we hope that these tips will help you make the most of its social media features. And, stay tuned to next month’s blog posts where we’ll share even more great social media tips.
If you are interested in learning more about and how it can help you manage and build relationships with your customers, we'd love to talk to you. !
by Intelligent Technologies, Inc
