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It's almost 2022 and social media is becoming the most interesting place for consumers to catch up, learn about new products and services, gain knowledge about the market, or spark engagement with a business about a potential product or service. Businesses, who are listening to the market, are utilizing social media marketing best practices to promote brand awareness jumping on social media platforms faster than you can say social listening.
Having a robust social media strategy is just good business!
Ah. That brings us to online reputation management. Comment management, a channel of monitoring your brand, is an integral customer service strategy for businesses and should not be ignored.
Ever scrolled through another company's brand mentions and notice an unanswered social media comment on their Facebook page or another social media platform? With online conversations on full display, there can be big consequences for the business that doesn't participate or ignores social media content.
Comment management is a part of any social media audit, not just about your reputation though. Managing comments can happen on social channels, on blog posts, online forums, on news sites, video content platforms, or anywhere across the web.
Content marketing also serves as a lifeline to generating leads in today’s digital marketing world. SO if you're an SMB, marketing agency, or a franchise keep reading!
In this blog post, we'll show you what the most important tips and tricks when it comes to comment management on different types of content for social media, some best practices, and ways to be more efficient.
What Is Social Media Management?
Social media management is a set plan of best practices for executing your social media strategy on various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. taking into account these methods:
- Content creation
- Content curation
- Comment management
- Social media design
- Reputation management
- Content marketing
- Social media marketing
- Media storage
- Social media
- Analytics and measurement
It is crucial to develop a successful social media strategy and improve your reputation or brand awareness. A crucial part of that strategy should be social media management because the way brands communicate today has changed.
Everything is digital now. This means that you need to communicate with your audience, customers, and clients on a regular basis. Social media is 101 of digital marketing, and managing comments is 101 of social media.
Keep reading this article to know more about comment management on social media.
How to Get Started With Social Media Management?
Pick Your Social Media Channels Carefully
Many people are trying to maximize their efforts and use every available channel. They think that by using many channels they will eventually succeed with one and go front here.
This is a wrong strategy and a waste of resources. What you need to do is to concentrate on one channel.
For example, you are good at making videos. Maybe you want to start with YouTube and measure the benefits of video marketing before starting with a blog or newsletter.
This way, you will be able to plan things out specifically for your audience and carefully engage them.
If you really want to try with more channels, try to think about your secondary channel and treat it as a backup.
Social Media Management Tools Are Important
Automation is the key for any kind of future endeavor. Social media management tools are crucial for today’s businesses. Social media management tools can help a business not just schedule posts or centralize youromnichannel social media strategy, but conquer content curation, design, comment management and all interactions and brand mentions, social media marketing tasks like boosting posts or running ads, and measurement of social media marketing campaigns.
This is just the tip of the iceberg as social media software companies like eclincher add new features almost weekly. There is so much value on investment a social media management software can provide. This can save you time and allow you to concentrate on more important tasks or utilize your lean teams to become more productive.
You can also track the trends and approach people that have similar audiences like yours. For example, your products are great for video. You may want to track some youtube influencers and ask them for collaboration.
There are other tools that can give you reports, analytics, and valuable data that you can show to your team members or clients. Reports are important for accountability and tracking results.
Use Conversational Language
Brands are trying to differentiate themselves by using different methods for engaging their audience. However, being formal in a business realm is still a rule to some extent. Again, this is a mistake.
Talking to your audience as one of them, in a casual manner, is the key. This will help your followers to connect with your message and build a relationship with your brand.
How to Handle Social Media Comments?
Positive Comments
You should always communicate with your audience. Handling negative comments is important but replying to positive feedback is quite useful. Here are some tips on how to handle positive comments.
Avoid Canned, Template-Like Responses
Template-like responses are easily recognized and are not bringing value to your brand. You should always avoid using templates and automated responses. Always give your honest response and talk to your followers like they are your friends.
It's all about connections and creating normal conversations. This will show the human side of your brand and help your audience to connect with you. After all, even though you are a business, there is always a person on the other side and your audience should feel that.
Personalize
Nobody likes to feel insignificant. This is common knowledge and should be well known. However, many businesses are using a cold approach when it comes to communication with customers.
By personalizing your responses, you will be able to create a stronger connection and build that initial trust that is often the most difficult step in the marketing process.
Of course, creating personalized responses takes time and effort but it really pays off. Once your audience feels that warm welcome, they will become eager to know more about you and your products or services. Not to mention that converting such customers into loyal fans is much easier.
Encourage Them to Visit Again
Don't think that once you convert a customer into a client your job is done. You need to keep your clients since (as we all know it) client retention is more important than customer requisition.
There are numerous benefits of client retention. They will spend more money, give you free PR, bring their friends, colleagues, etc.
Relay the Feedback
Point out the fact that their comment will be mentioned to your team. It will send a message that comments matter. Of course, it would be great if you relay the feedback and make your team members happy as well.
Request Reviews on Other Platforms
A satisfied customer is much more likely to review your other platforms. Capitalize on the fact that they already like what you do and ask them to give you an honest opinion on your other projects.
Leverage the Feedback
Every positive feedback can be used on another occasion. Use positive comments as testimonials. You can promote them across platforms or put them on your website.
Testimonials are a great way of showing social proof and helping your future clients to trust your brand.
Negative Comments
Nobody likes negative comments. However, there are always haters or simply people that don’t like what we do and that's fine.
Even though they can be unpleasant, negative comments are not always a bad thing. There are many ways in which you can use them to your advantage.
Do Not Ignore or Delete Comments
It's never a good strategy to delete a negative comment unless they are really trolling you. Genuine negative comments are there to give you information and deleting it sends a signal that there is something wrong with the integrity of your brand.
Additionally, by deleting a negative comment, you could trigger a wave of negative comments on other platforms and create a really unpleasant situation for you and your business.
Therefore, always reply with respect and try to turn the situation in such a way that an unsatisfied user is not able to continue with negativity. It's all about damage control.
Respond ASAP
Don’t wait till things become heated. Respond as quickly as you can to negative comments and eliminate the escalation and further frustrations.
Apologize First and Acknowledge the Error
The first thing you need to do when responding to a negative comment is to apologize. Apology gives your brand a human side and shows your readers that you are not running from mistakes.
Showing accountability and readiness to accept the blame is among the most respected things in not just business but in life in general.
Ask For More Info
In some cases, what seems to be a meaningless comment is actually a real complaint on something you missed. Always politely ask for more info in order to resolve the issue successfully.
Turning a frustrated customer into a happy client is one of the most rewarding experiences and should be among your top priorities when meaning social media.
Be Transparent
Always be transparent with your actions. Nobody likes a brand that hides its actions behind some shady words. Be clear when communicating issues and show your readers that they have nothing to worry about.
Give an Explanation
If there is a question behind a negative comment or the reader has raised a serious concern about your brand, always give a good explanation.
Communicate effectively and give the main points. Nobody likes to read long stories when they are frustrated or angry.
Be Absolutely Honest
Lying to your readers will only prolong the inevitable. Your followers are consuming your continent and are able to sense if there are inconsistencies in your messaging.
Be absolutely honest and show your weaknesses alongside your strengths. Don’t worry, nobody is perfect and everybody knows it. It will make your brand relatable and trustworthy.
Reassure Them
If time is the factor and the issue cannot be resolved on short notice, always give reassurance that you’re working on solving the problem. Being proactive is the key to communicating effectively.
Don’t leave room for doubt and wait for your readers to ask again. Tell them that their problem will get resolved in due course.
Offer an Incentive
The incentive is one of the best ways to turn an unhappy reader into a happy customer. This could be a free demo or a coupon code for a reduction in price for your next webinar.
There are many ways in which you can give your readers something that you already know is of value to them.
Go Private, if Necessary
If it's necessary to continue communication in private you can do it. After you’ve resolved the issue, don’t leave the public thread unfinished. Close the issue in the comment section as well in order to inform your readers that you have responded and solved the issue.
Keep Your Cool and Be Polite at All Times
It doesn’t matter if you want to start your podcast or an online store, you need to be polite on social media. This is very important. Remember, your readers are allowed to be frustrated, angry, irritated, etc. It is a beginner's mistake to become rude or show disrespect in any way.
You are representing your brand at all times and should be calm and not take things personally. Why should you be offended in the first place? There is no reason for it and it's bad for business so please avoid it at all times.
How to Respond to Social Media Comments?
Commenting on Facebook is not very hard. First, you need to use the right tool for comments management. As a business, you can manage your accounts directly. You can have all the Facebook conversations in one place.
This is done through the integration of Facebook messing with your customer engagement tool. You can delegate work among your team members and track conversations across Facebook comments and messages under one platform.
This is great for measuring KPIs or customer lifetime value and using data to create advanced reports. Your clients can have an idea of your activity and you can monitor the activity of your team.
There are other ways of testing your audience on Facebook and getting the right results before deciding on your marketing strategy.
Twitter is a vibrant social media with a lot of comments, which is why many people feel overwhelmed when they need to manage them. You can always check notifications in the Notifications tab on the left sidebar.
Click on the comment bubble icon (it's at the bottom of the tweet) to respond to a mention. After you type the message, click the reply button and you are all set.
Instagram is becoming insanely popular in recent years. To track comments, just look at notifications and tap the heart icon in the top right corner. You’ll see likes, comments and new followers.
By clicking a notification, you’ll be automatically able to respond to that comment. Tap Reply and respond by typing your comment.
There are many ways of successfully engaging Instagram users, but it's always important to be short and be positive when commenting.
Another important social media for promoting business. LinkedIn became one of the most important channels for engaging customers in recent years.
To comment on a post, just find a post you want to leave a comment on. Click on the Comment option and you will see a text box. This is where you need to type your comment. After you’re done, click enter and you are all done.
Why Responding to Social Media Comments Is Important?
Social media is for building brand awareness and engaging your audience. Responding to comments is a crucial component of this process.
We saw how responding to a positive comment is just as important as managing negative feedback. Positive comments are amazing because you have feedback that what you’re doing is good, you can further build conventions, have free PR, etc.
However, don’t treat negative comments as something bad. They are valuable information. Your audience will tell you what you need to improve (even though their language is sometimes very heated).
This being said, we can say that there are three most important benefits when it comes to comment management on social media: brand awareness, customer service, and consumer insights.
Social media monitoring tools can help you track and analyze your results, and ultimately help you learn how to perform better.
Brand Awareness
It's not enough just to post regularly, create stunning visuals or amazing articles. You need to show your cadence consistency in communication. They need to see you in action, how you deal with issues in real-time.
By interacting with their comments, you will give them a sense of what you are all about. Have in mind that your comments will read your non-followers as well which will sometimes be the only way for them to decide if you are worth their attention.
Customer Service
Social media is a great place for helping your customers to know more about your company but also for resolving issues. A lot of the time, someone will tag a company’s page and give their complaint.
You need to be very careful when it comes to managing those comments. This is the make-or-break situation. If you resolve the issue successfully, you will not only keep that customer happy but it will attract more customers.
Consumer Insights
Every feedback (or lack of it) sends information. If you don't get many reactions from some type of content it means that you should try something else. Content with the most engagement is what most likely interests your followers.
You don’t need a lot of analytics to get a sense of what your audience wants to see next. Just follow what works and go from there.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Conclusion
This is the end of the article but the beginning of your quest for developing the perfect comment management strategy. Feel free to look further for additional social media marketing trends for businesses and ecommerce strategies to incorporate what we talked about today.
If I have missed something or you have some comments, let me know. I promise to leave a great reply because, as we now know, it is the best thing you can do!
