Treat ’em special
Sometimes it’s just not practical to give one on one attention to everyone. Either there are too many people vying for your attention, or you don’t have the staff to go around. But even if you can’t have a long discussion with someone you just met in a Facebook group, maybe you can personally invite them to a Twitter chat on the subject.
You can send them a coupon with a personal note. You could go by their blog posts, remind them where you met and give them a detailed response.
Just go that little extra mile. The dividends are always worth it, though the returns don’t always come from where you most expect.
Add a voice
Sound is a great way to add another dimension to your social media interactions. When you’re small, you’ll be able to offer to call each person individually for a product demo or limited trial consultation. Of course that idea won’t scale to sudden massive growth, so it’s important to have a plan in place that can add a more intimate touch, even if you don’t have the staff to personalize each encounter.
Think about starting a podcast. Put a Skype link in an Easter Egg location on your site, and answer those calls yourself.
Or add a button to your site that has an audio message (but remember that people sometimes surf at work or while their small children sleep – do NOT have sound auto-play when your website loads).
Publish pictures without hesitation
I once asked a client why they were so resistant to the idea of having their pictures – or at least photos of staff members who already said they were willing – on their site or in their social media profiles.
“But, Tinu,” he said, in obvious distress, “then they would know what we look like.”
Head? Desk. Of course they’ll know what you look like. Kind of the point. But I can’t pretend I don’t know what he means. Decades of traditional marketing has taught us to separate ourselves from the customer. It’s us against them, right?
Trust is critical in this era
Except that we’re in the digital age now. In these post-industrial, pre-robotic times, trust is more important than ever. Everyone over the age of 20 grew up in times where, at least to an extent, we expected NOT to trust companies, of any size, not just small business.
Believe it or not, we’re now entering an age where companies have no choice but to become more human, in response to how the market is changing. With social media, we have the power to demand this as consumers. Either companies will change to meet this demand, or they will die.
One word of caution though: you’re looking to be friendLY, not friends.
Add video, pronto
From video chatting to video responses to email, you can take online encounters to the next level just by showing your face. Now they know you’re a real person, that your avatar is actually a picture of you and not stock photo of some model.
They’ll have another aspect of your personality added to their image of you that may not come across over LinkedIn or in an email. Every intimate detail can make them feel safer doing business with you.
