Designhill

Social Media Strategy: Winning Your Followers & Converting Them Into Loyal Customers

Designhill
Social Media Strategy

Last updated on June 22nd, 2023

One of the renowned marketing icons has quoted, “Brands that ignore social media…..will die”! It’s that simple when successful marketers and entrepreneurs define the importance of social media marketing in today’s competitive digital world. Social media is all about engaging people and having a large number of followers (fans). A greater fan base tells a lot about the social status of an individual or brand on social media. Businesses also use different social media platforms to drive potential customers’ attention. However, the situation comes when it gets tough to convert your followers into customers and win their loyalty. At that moment, a well structured social media strategy plays a big role. In this transcript, you will learn the correct way to turn your followers into loyal customers. Have a look!

For businesses, social media is their best bet when it comes to reaching out to the masses and engaging them with products or services. There are millions of people on different social channels. Businesses can easily use social media as their go-to platform when they need to engage people with their brand. They can talk to them through useful content and listen to what they are interested in lately. They can also take the help of social media templates to create an engaging design for the content that you share with your audience on social media.

However, merely having a big fan following on social media is not enough for a brand. The next step should be to find the best ways to convert those fans into customers. But, the journey doesn’t stop here. You need to bring those customers again and again to your products or services. Such a loyal customer base can be ensured only when they have become super fans of what your business does and offers.

But, how do you do that? One surefire way is to build quality relationships with your target audience, which helps in converting sales. But, it is not that easy. With the competition in the market increasing, you need to formulate your engagement and marketing strategy differently.

So, Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, organized a webinar on this issue on 10 December 2020. The topic was Social Media Strategy Turning Fans Into Customers And Customers Into Super Fans. The guest speakers were Brooke B. Sellas, Brynne Tillman, Jessika Phillips, Ramon Ray, and Saul Colt. They showed how businesses can turn their fans into customers and then them into super loyal fans.

During the panel discussion, the experts gave advice on how to generate sales using social media. They illustrated the importance of follower engagement and offered vital tips to create compelling content. The experts covered a wide range of aspects of social media from the customer engagement angle.

Key Attractions:

About The Experts:

Brooke B. Sellas

Brooke B. Sellas the Founder & CEO of @HelloBSquared, an award-winning social media, advertising, and customer care agency. She co-hosts The Marketing Companion podcast with Mark Schaefer and discusses marketing trends. She believes in ‘’Think Conversation, Not Campaign.’’

Social Handles:

Brynne Tillman

Brynne Tillman specializes in converting LinkedIn connection to sales. She has helped businesses using LinkedIn to create connections with customers.

Social Handles:

Jessika Phillips

Jessika Phillips is the founder of Now Marketing Group, which is a Forbes recognized Agency Partner and a certified inbound partner with Hubspot. She is a social media marketing strategist and teaches relationship marketing. Also, she hosts Social Media Week Lima, the largest social media Midwest conference.

Social Handles:

Ramon Ray

Ramon Ray is the founder of Smart Hustle Media, which educates small business owners. He is an in-demand keynote speaker and is a best selling author as well. Ramon is the author of ‘’Celebrity CEO’’ book. He was invited to speak at the White House and testify at the United States Congress. Also, he has interviewed President Obama and joined Ivanka Trump at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in India.

Social Handles:

Saul Colt

Saul Colt is the Founder and Creative Director at The Idea Integration Company. He is recognized as the one of the best community builders and experimental marketers in Canada. Saul is also the NYT Best selling author. He was the first international employee of Zipcar and he was responsible for launching Zipcar in the Canadian marketplace.

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Here Is The Video Of The Panel Discussion With The Experts

Let’s Dive Into The Important Discussions And Suggestions These Experts Had During The Panel Discussion

Designhill: As a small business owner, how to get started on social media, when you have limited investment?

Jessika: Social media is just a conversational platform. You don’t have to choose all the networks either. Just start with thinking about who you are as a brand and who you want to communicate with as your ideal audience. Pick your ideal persona, and what you want to show up to care more for now.

So, Kara uses an acronym just capturing attention, articulating your message, using it to build real relationships and exceptional experiences. And going in with that mindset, choose the platform that will help you articulate your message. You can best show up to build relationships with the people you want to build it with. You should use it to provide exceptional experiences.

Focus On Messaging

Your messaging is going to be important. For example, ensure how we can answer questions here or serve people during the pandemic write things that they would normally do on our brick and mortar? How can we show up on social media, not necessarily just as we sell?

But, how can we help them and service our audience, they’re social and spend time. They are not just showing up to create your content and put it out there nicely. That is going to capture attention using tools like Designhill to do that, but also to engage and listen and just use it to build those relationships and don’t focus on the likes, but just focus on the conversations that you’re building.

Saul Colt: I think it is also important to show who you are so that you give away some of your personality. If your brand is playful and casual, don’t have a corporate voice on social media at the beginning. It is so important to establish your brand first.

I agree with everything Jessika said about being out there and listening to conversations, starting conversations. But these are all common sense things about being human. Some of the mistakes that some brands make is you can be the most fun person in real life and socially, you create these rigid boundaries and lanes to stay in.

But in the early days of society they had a person’s face as their avatar instead of their logo. Because, people get mad at companies quickly, but they won’t get mad at people so fast. So you have to really infuse that people aspect into your social platform. And you should allow them to see the people behind the company. The whole reason for being social is to let people sort of have a peek inside.

Jessika: I always tell clients that they should start from the inside out. If your call is not right, your voice isn’t right, then your marketing is never going to be right. So whatever is happening, what kind of theme, like, get that right first, with the culture in check, get your tone of voice and check and show up truly who you are. This is because people are gonna be able to tell the difference anyway. So, make sure that you articulate it well. That’s part of articulating your voice.

Bryanne: I think you have to get away from what you think they want to hear. You should figure out what it is that they truly want to hear. Because we want to tell them what we want and we can break the system. We have got to really identify what it is that they want to hear and what will engage them.

Consider doing easy things like creating a poll on LinkedIn and share it on Twitter. You should start to identify by asking questions to your audience. Ask what it is that they care about and what’s their priority. You can gather so many

If you ask someone to take a poll, they are thrilled, and they love to press the button. So, we can use social in a way to gather insights about what it is that we need to be sharing on social. I think you should identify what it is that they want to hear us talking about. insights and people love to share their point of view.

Designhill: What strategies would you suggest to tap the right audience on social media?

Brooke B. Sellas: We have helped our clients fine-tune their social listening, which can go to all aspects of your business. It goes to your product development, customer care, and plays a huge part in social media. That is where a lot of these conversations are happening.

Use Social Listening

I think one should use social listening, which uses artificial intelligence to bring you back data in real-time. You can slice and dice that data, any way you see fit, you can start to understand your audience as a whole. Then slice and dice your audience and understand their interest. Find out what they’re talking about and what content they want to see from you.

Then, you can fine-tune your messaging, you can use the words your audience uses, what we find a lot of times is that brands want to talk about things with their own brand jargon. And that’s not how people are consumers are talking about their products and services.

So, from our perspective, if you want to join the conversation, you can’t talk like a brand you have to talk like here. You should use some of these insights from listening to not only better fine-tune who our audience is.

Designhill: What are the parameters to decide whether the audience that we are catering or talking to is right?

Listen If They Are Talking

Ramon Ray: I think that when you start posting on social media if you hear this silence, you are on the wrong path. But as you are posting, sharing, and educating people will flock to you and be engaged. I think the marketplace will tell you. And I think the other thing I would say is don’t worry about going to the niche. Sometimes we think all 300 million or 400 million people in America or billion people in India didn’t follow me. That’s okay. You couldn’t even handle all the business.

So, just target what’s important for you. But you’ll know, because if you hear silence, then probably people are not picking up what you’re serving.

Pay Attention To Your Favorite Clients

Brynne Tillman: If you have already got a business, take a look not just at all of your clients and find people like them. But pay attention also to your favorite clients, the ones that you want more of. Then start talking to them about what they care about and get them involved and engaging with you. That will attract more people like them.

The other thing is to find magnets. These are the people that are already attracting your ideal clients, whether it’s on Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn. Or, they may simply be hanging out, engaging not just with the author of the content, but all the people commenting. You can really build a very fast following of the right people. If you start to leverage people that are already attracting them and engage there.

Have A Direct Conversation

Jessika: Don’t just wait to see what people do. If you already have some people that are your audience, your ideal client, have a conversation with them directly. Ask them the questions like where are you going for information? Who do you like to enjoy listening to? What do you prefer? Why did you choose us? What were you up to considering other than us and look at that and have those real conversations versus guessing.

If you have access to that, use it frequently. And look for not just your customers but your community as well. Just like here at this panel. We all have different brands but have a similar goal. We’re all trying to help brands and build true relationships. This is a community I am going to share their content, I think they’re doing an amazing job I’m sharing it on, and vice versa.

So think about those community members that are also collaborators with you. Think of your clients that will become advocates, in your team members as well. If they are engaged with what you’re sharing, you’re really doing something right. This is because they’re going to share it on and become your evangelists for you.

If your team members are sharing, advocating, and are passionate about your brand, that is where your magnets will stick and you can use them to identify with other people.

Spend Time With Them

Saul Colt: Not only talking about the early growth of your channels, but you should also know the first 50 people that follow you by the first name. You should spend time with them asking them questions. One of the things that I do is I try to go outside of social media to build my social media channels. So, if I have got 100 people that have bought my product I don’t push them to social. Also, I do not make a hard sell.

But one of the first things I do anytime I join somebody, I try to send a survey to all of the customers. It is a five-question simple survey. It tells me everything I need. The questions are like what books do you like? What industry blogs do you read? What are some of your favorite YouTube channels? I basically asked who they follow, why they like it, and stuff like that.

And then the fifth question is always just something silly, like, what’s your favorite color, so that it does not look like the thing. But if I know what blogs they are reading, which trade shows they go to. I come to know where they prefer to read their trade information, etc. I can figure out what sort of world they live in. So I can pretty much determine which trade shows I should go to. This is because there are probably another 25% of people that look and smell just like these people.

Figure Out Who They Are

If I know what blogs they are reading, I can go to those blogs. Those blogs might have bulletin boards, or Reddit, subreddits, or all sorts of things. And once I actually know this, I can then go out and be part of other people’s communities and drag them back to my community. So, it’s not always just me screaming at them to come here. Social media was always about is supposed to let be leveling the playing field and not doing a hard sell on people.

I actually got an email this morning on LinkedIn, I was going to share it, but I thought it was maybe a little aggressive to share. But, it was literally a guy who just said I just launched a company and it’d be really great if you bought four of my headphones. I have never met this person, I don’t know them, we have no relationship and stuff like that. And, it was just a four-line email where it’s just like, it would really help out my business.

I would react to an email from a friend who said that to me, but someone I don’t know. So, with social media, you have to still earn people’s trust. It is still about showing value, joining communities, creating relationships. You need to make them want to come to you because the hard sell only works for so long. Then, maybe someone will give you one chance for two chances. But, you want people to want to be there and that’s the whole thing.

Designhill: Is it possible to grow on social media without having to resort to paid promotions like FB Ads and Instagram ads?

Yeah, that’s a tough question. Because back in the day, and how I got my start in social media, in 2007, was doing everything organically, there wasn’t paid. There weren’t even Facebook pages. But, I managed to put together a pub crawl and use social media to get 7500 people to sign up and we made $60,000.

But over time, and especially with sites like Facebook, and Instagram, they have changed their algorithm. They changed it in such a way that it is very hard to get organic attention like that. So, what we have seen with our clients is that it is still possible. You have to do those things that all of our wonderful panelists have been telling you today. They tell you to be smart about it, be human, don’t go out there and hard sell.

Combine Organic And Paid

However, we have seen with our clients that the most successful ones with social media combined both organic and paid efforts together. I don’t want you to think that means you have to spend 1000s of dollars. A lot of times it’s as simple as a $1 a day like a campaign, getting people to follow your brand. But make sure that you have a reason to keep them there. Also, you have a reason for them to engage once they do come there. So, I think paid and organic practices work best together.

Paid Advertising Is Useful

Ramon: I think paid advertising is great. Oftentimes, I think why smaller businesses fail in it because they don’t know how to do it. So, I would say you can do it yourself. But, it’s good to work with somebody who can help guide you on the funnel.

But, I think yes for me organic does work. I am doing Instagram stories and sharing other people’s content over the past 20 plus years. This is because I invented the internet, my business has grown. So yes, I think organic definitely can work. I say frequency, relevancy, engagement, analytic, those four things have to be hand in hand, especially if you are using organic.

Differentiate Marketing From Sales

Although I do believe that there is a place for paid ads, there is a difference between marketing and sales. There is a difference between inbound and outbound. And the way that we teach people to organically grow is to get it into the inbox. You should have outbound efforts. If you have got real value, and sharing content, maybe it’s curated content, that doesn’t always have to be original content.

But, you have got to show up in their inbox with value vendor-agnostic value. That means that when they consume the content that you have shared, they don’t have to talk to you to have gotten value from consuming it. So, there is an ask offer ratio, and everything we do, we are asking them for three minutes to watch a video, two minutes to read a post, at the end of it.

Then, they have one of three reactions. They can say that was a bait and switch. I thought it was going to be a value, but they pitched me right, connect and pitch on LinkedIn is a bait and switch. It is just right, we don’t want to get there. So I consumed your content, and you tricked me.

The second one is neutral, it doesn’t hurt you. But it doesn’t help you. And if you are too neutral, they stop watching and listening. So it’s not that you have hurt your reputation. But, they are not continually coming back.

Resonate With Your Buyer

So, it has to be compelling. And to be compelling to master that ask us for a ratio. To resonate with your buyer, create curiosity, teach them something new, get them thinking differently, and lead to your solution, not with your solution, if you want to use social media for business development.

Saul Colt: I’m going to take it in a little different direction. So Brooke, I totally agree you have to pay for, you have to pay for, attention right now. And it could be small, it could be large, you have to play smartly. I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve got a big following. And the only reason I have a big following is that I’m usually inappropriate. I’m usually irreverent. And I was there early. So it was a lot easier to build a following when there weren’t so many people on there.

And, you get one or two blog posts from someone saying, These are the 20 most interesting people on Twitter today. And all of a sudden, you’ve got 1000 new followers, in a matter of an hour.

I don’t think that happens as much anymore. You have built something incredible for yourself. But, I look at what you do. I don’t have the stamina to do as many posts you do all day and stuff like that. If you’re not going to pay for content, the quickest way to build an audience is to really have a clear point of view that people are going to follow. It might not be a conventional point of view. It is probably like Brent said, you can’t be neutral.

Have An Opinion

If you want to build a following you have to have an opinion. You have to stand out. And you have to have something that people are going to literally tell 10 friends. So, you got to hear what this man or woman is saying. Because if you’re just like the early days of Twitter, everyone jokes, but it was literally I’m eating a tuna sandwich. Do that stuff now and you’re gonna get crickets, and stuff like that. So it’s really interesting.

I know what connects with people because I just pay close attention and talk about my personal brand. And, and when I do corporate, I could tell you before I send a tweet, pretty much roughly how many people respond to it just historically, in paying attention. And I still do the ones that no one is going to care about. This is because it’s for me, sometimes it’s not for everyone else.

I don’t think you could build an organic audience to like a crazy amount. That is unless you are willing to put in a ridiculous amount of time that will leave you exhausted every day. or put a little bit of pain energy to work with people, get groups together, share likes, and stuff like that. But, something that’s been said many times in this conversation already. You should not worry about likes. Instead, worry about what people actually care about it.

Figure Out Your Goal First

I would always rather have 600 people who respond to everything I say. It is better than 100,000, people who couldn’t care less anytime I go out there. It all depends on what your goals are. 600 likes for a tweet mean nothing if nobody buys your product if selling is your goal.

So, if it is always figuring out your goal, work backward, it’s engagement, then craft your things towards engagement. If it’s sales, crafting things toward sales, if it’s education, crafting things, education, if it’s all of those things, then you figure out what the balance is, and you work it out there. But it’s always a goal first, work backward, at least that’s how I do.

Designhill: How to plan content in the initial stages of a business to cause maximum attention of people and convert them as followers?

Plan Simple Things

Ramon Ray: Content is definitely so important. Especially if you have teams of people, I think the strategy is important. So simple things such as a content calendar, being aware of what holidays are there, being aware of what your audience may want matter. Also, remember, it’s not just the holidays, like a national country holiday, it could be today’s Thursday, we’re celebrating just your one year anniversary as a customer.

So, I think planning the content you’re having is one, what content will you say is two. But where it will live is also important. If everybody’s saying why aren’t you on Instagram? Why don’t you use Instagram when you can come back to them? Because our customers are not on Instagram? Great. Maybe they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook or even on Tik Tok.

So my point being, what are you going to say? How are you going to say it? Where do you live and then measure and then measure 30 days, 15 days, 45 days, see what resonates? What works? And you go from there steady. And you will have more success in your business?

Brooke: There are our clients who are just starting out with social media and they are unsure about content. We tell them that let us build the content together and plan a content calendar. And then let the data tell us where to go next. So, one of the things you can do is super simple. We call it a seesaw report. And every single week, we look at every post on every platform.

Analyze Your Content

We pin the top three performing posts and the bottom three performing posts. And we do a quick analysis of those posts. Do we try to draw out what are some of the themes of this content? Why did it do well? Why didn’t it do well today using a hashtag? Was it an image? Was it only a link? Whether it is text only? What was the theme of the content? Was it a sales pitch? Or was it entertaining?

Over time, you do that all report every single week with all of your content. Then, you will start to see micro trends and patterns of what’s working and what’s not working. It will help you develop a better strategy for your content moving forward.

Designhill: Could you suggest more ideas or more things that work on social media when it comes to engaging with your audience?

Jessika Phillips: Yeah, as long as it doesn’t feel like an engagement tactic. That is the best way of personalization. I love that depending on who your audience is. We love personalizing whether it’s audio messages.

Build One To One Relationship

And in the inbox, you get to remember some of the best ways of growing engagement sometimes aren’t just focusing on getting mass engagement. It is like focusing on one to one. So, how can I build a relationship and rapport with one individual person at a time sometimes? That will multiply because they’re going to be more loyal, coming back to your content and sharing and engaging.

Now, there are some ways to grow this and harness this. But it does take time. But I like that some of our clients will build smaller, more niche communities. These are more intimate where people feel comfortable talking about things. So, whether it’s a Facebook group, or LinkedIn group, or using stories. The whole goal of engagement is to build a connection and rapport with your clients.

But of course, some contests and things like that work, but it just can’t feel gimmicky. The whole key is just building that rapport for repeat referral, traffic back to you. And you build reports, your clients are there. They stay loyal to you.

Designhill: What are the things that brands or businesses are doing on social media, which annoys the customers a lot?

Saul Colt: I think everybody is going to have a different threshold for annoyance. But the obvious ones are kind of like that email I got today. I don’t know you but I am already asking for favors and masking demands. And assuming that we have a relationship that we don’t have already. It is about sending too many spam messages and stuff like that. I think you’ll kind of figure it out by looking at your data people are bailing, not opening.

Know What Annoys Customers

So, if you send me 20 emails and it is all about yourself, and there’s no value towards me, that’s gonna annoy me. There are tonnes of things that companies could be doing better. But, these are the things you shouldn’t do. And like your customers will tell you what annoys them and pay really close attention to that. Let them respond because one of the things that will annoy them is when they are telling you what they want.

Brynne: I think you have to come from the perspective that there is a human being on the other side of that message. We tend it especially when we are sales-oriented, and we are stuck in getting my number. We think if we ask enough people some might say yes. But if you walked into a trade show or a business card exchange and walked up to someone and said, buy for headphones from me, they would laugh.

You start with building rapport, building toward a relationship, but learning about them. Treat the person on the other side of the message the way you would if they were on the other side of the table. It is just you have to get that this is not a cold calling platform, whatever platform we’re on. That is not what this is about. This is about engaging and bringing value and being a resource and building relationships. The sales will come when the time is right.

Social Is About Relationship

Jessika: Social media is not for sales. Can it grow sales? Yes. But does it typically happen from the just post? Social can generate business back on your website or in an inbox. But typically, it is not for just promoting and growing sales right there. You can have a carton or store things like that on there.

But, I’m using social posting right now with the intention of selling. To me, it is about relationship and rapport building. So people do want to come back and choose you. It is setting yourself apart from other options that are out there. But each post has to generate some kind of sale. It will help eliminate that question in your mind of what you should post.

Brynne: When it comes to posting, there is an element of LinkedIn where there is a much more direct sell. I have clients, my clients like me, and so I’ll ask them for referrals. And they may say that they can’t think of anyone right now. But with LinkedIn, you can search and filter their connections and make a list of people they know.

Build Value And Be A Resource

You can bring that list to your clients. You happen to know these eight people that I’d love to get in front of. Can we talk through them, and three of them end up to be really good for you. And you could get warm introductions from your happy clients, your networking partners, that’s where the sales can come in.

But, if you start selling in content and messaging and inbound and cold calling, it’s just never going to convert. We are tired of seeing it, we’re exhausted from being bait and switch bait and pitched all day long. So, we’ve got to move from here. If we don’t like it, why do we think our buyer is going to like it. There is a disconnect. We have to build value, be a resource, and build those relationships. The sales will come when the time is right.

Use Social To Make Emails Open

Saul Colt: One way to think about it is to build the relationship on social media, so they’ll actually open the email when you send it to them. And then in the email, you can ask for the referral, the sale, and do those things. This is because that is the sort of the way I differentiate the two. I still think email is the number one tool for sales.

But on average for most industries, you got like a 22 to 30% open rate on newsletters. So, use social to get that open rate from 22 to 30 to 35 to 39. You never get it 100% and everything, it’s 70% open. But, it’s all about goals and stuff. So you use your social to try those opens on the email.

Designhill: What is your advice to people who are trying to zero down on the app social listening tool?. Also, if you could name some of the most effective social listening tools for us, that would be helpful?

Ramon Roy: Sure, I happen to be part of probably the simplest way to do it. There’s a tonne of tools, ai tools, all kinds of cool tools, which people should consider. But I just want to drop down at the basic level. As a keynote speaker, for example, that I am, I follow the hashtag, keynote speaker on Instagram. So, for me, at the simplest level, social listening, I’m not posting anything, but I have become known to many experts all over the world, Australia, Asia, the US just by following a good hashtag.

So, I think that is the basic level of social listening. As I said before, it is not about repeatedly typing and talking. We do that too much. For me, that’s social listening, but there are many tools, especially as companies grow, absolutely you should use because you can mind data.

Brooke: There are some very wonderful and expensive tools out there. But there is Google Alerts, which is free, and it still works. I still have Google Alerts set up on my own company, my name, my top competitors, and any other stakeholders that I’m trying to pay attention to. Walker is another free tool you can use. So, there are free tools out there to kind of dip your toes in.

Social Listening Is Free

Listening is free. There’s a lot of advanced ways to listen through social media. And if you want to go into the paid world, there are tons of paid tools. I’m truly agnostic. For the most part, we use Sprout Social, for listening at our company. But, we also use what our clients have asked us. So, we have used Digi Mind, Choros, Meltwater, and many others.

The bottom line is that the tool is providing needs to meet your own key performance indicators. So, if you decide to spend some of your significant budgets on a social listening tool, I understand what you’re trying to achieve with that tool. And then, when you go to do that demo with the company, you need to say, here are my three main KPIs. How is your tool going to meet that show me? And if they can’t show you, that’s not the tool for you?

Join Groups

Jessika: I mentioned one other tool. Yeah, that you can do. It’s been amazing for many of my clients to join groups. There are groups around every niche topic that you can think of. You may want to know what your audience is thinking about your persona and what they’re into. Or you want to ask those questions, and want to know your audience, then join a group.

And you can join it as yourself or the business now in many cases. Just start by listing here, what they’re seeing, what they’re posting, see what they’re commenting. It’s been amazing, we’ve come up with so many great blog topics for that because we know that’s what people are into. This is because we’re listening to them. And it’s free.

You can also go to tools, like answer the public comments or you can find out other topics. They just heard enough to help you with your content strategy. But, just go join some groups, follow hashtags, and listen, which is free.

Brynne: Also, just Google what you think and it will tell you the eight or 10 things that people are using to search. So, you know what people are really saying and asking. And that’s a really very easy, free way to grab the next title of your content.

Designhill: What is the right stage for a business to take a paid version of the social listening tool?

Brooke: I come from a nonprofit background so I’m very frugal with my budget. So, I definitely encourage you to do your homework and then make the tool work for you. But the social listening tools that we use for our clients and the use cases that we have literally helped from beginning to end.

We have helped a client solve product development issues. Also, we helped a celebrity jewelry client pick her new next brick and mortar location. We helped where to open that store based on the data that social media or social media listening brought us. And, we also helped her as she wasn’t producing enough silver jewelry but we kept getting silver jewelry requests. So we use social listening to quantify which pieces she should go into production with next, knowing that she would sell out immediately.

Build Personas From Social Listening

I mean we built audience personas from social listening, we’ve helped with products, pain points for research and development, We have a luxury appliance brand to put out a new fancy coffee machine that cost upwards of $3,000. And then when people couldn’t figure out how to change the coffee filter, it was starting to happen through conversations online.

They were not necessarily tagging the company. But, the listening allowed us to because of the keywords that we had on this product. We could see that people were chatting amongst themselves about this terrible coffee filter problem. We were able to bring that to the client, quantify that pain point, and then also come up with a solution of putting a video of how to change the coffee filter on the product page.

So I mean, it truly isn’t just about social media marketing, it can help every aspect of a business. If you can afford it and use it, you should do that. However, be frugal and be smart about it, do your homework, research, and make sure that it’s going to solve your particular goals.

Jessika: You can’t just list on the platforms that you’re comfortable with. I think that’s like a big misconception too. With brands expecting to be tagged, like the prime example was upright Ocean Spray with on the Tik Tok example, this guy was just out there living his best life with Ocean Spray, if they were not listening to that. They could have missed a huge brand opportunity in any brand.

I mean, we’re not using Tik Tok, many of us aren’t. But because they were listening, they were able to tap and maximize quickly on that opportunity. Like everything, and this guy is now living his best life in a really cool truck. So I mean, just yeah, listening, not just on the platforms you’re comfortable with, it can make a big difference. You can make a difference in not only your marketing but also, what your sales come as a result of it.

Saul Colt: I just want to add regarding what happened with Ocean Spray again. Half the people listening to us have no clue we’re talking about so let’s just flag that as well. We’re all in our own vacuum. But there was a guy on Tik Tok and other social platforms called Dog Face. So you can take that what it is, and that’s what his handle is. And he was drinking Ocean Spray while going on a skateboard. He works in a boxing company meat company.

Just Take The Risks

But, he works at a job you’re working hard and all this kind of thing with your arms. The point is that I just want to underline the risk. They could have said oh, he’s not female in a big house, not a mom with three kids or he’s not a dad with land in the flannel jacket. hydrate cranberry juice. No, he’s some dudes now, by his own admission, bad teeth, his handle is his dog face. He just dances to credit crazy music. So, my point is sometimes you gotta take risks and just do stuff. And to the point, the results happen. I want to underline that they didn’t do a study and think oh, well, he’s not a fit.

Designhill: Are there tools that we can use to help us learn where our target audience is and know their interest?

Saul Colt: Learn where your target audience is, do a customer identification, exercise, and actually understand who your customers are. Because once you actually know who they are, that answers half the questions that you’re trying to figure out. Like, why this tool, what they do, and stuff like that.

And, if you really don’t know who your customers are, it’s kind of like the four most important things about designing a product or a service. I would say, this is the one part you shouldn’t look for a tool for a shortcut. You should go through the whole process, identify who your target customers are. Figure out if you are actually building something for them correctly. Then, you can build personas.

Designhill: You have had a quick casual presence on social media, how is it best to shift in order to represent yourself as an entrepreneur?

Ramon Ray: I have a social presence online with my kids, my cat, my dog, things of that nature. Now I have a business, how do I do it? On online, I am one consistent person, if it’s anything very personal, it’s on a private WhatsApp group.

So that’s a one-two, for those who are starting out, just start today , you’ve been doing stuff with your family and friends, whatever, over the course of three months, six months, ideally speaking, if it’s nothing really bad, nobody’s going to notice. Let us do something ashamed of. But just start today, as Seth Godin says, There’s no better time today than to go out and launch. It’s risky but start now.

Leverage Your Daily Happening

Brynne: When you are going to start now and you’re stuck, where do you start? A couple of things start to capture your own genius. You are out there answering questions to clients, every day, sending emails or prospects, and having conversations.

You may be in sales, or any kind of business development, talking to people every single day, you are probably a prolific content producer. But you are just not capturing it. And so I think it’s really important to start to get hyper-aware of the answers, you’re giving the people the questions that are being asked, and start to leverage what is happening in your daily life. And then talk about how do we use that already existing content to convert to actually shareable content.

Make People Your Hero

Saul Colt: How to turn fans into customers? Make them the hero of the story. I don’t pay influencers lots of money. Find the people who have maybe 1000 or 500 or 10,000 followers, but they are so laser targeted to what you’re doing, and use your voice to amplify your customers.

Make them the champion, make ads with your customers. It is less about having a celebrity say that they like you for 72 hours and then say they like someone else two days later. It is about investing in the people that have invested in you. Use their platforms, leverage their relationships, in a nice way. Leverage is such a harsh word but invests in the people who are investing in you and grow that way.

I would rather have someone who has 600 followers talking about my brand. But 400 of those 600 people will maybe buy my product, then somebody with 150,000 followers that nobody will care what I’m talking about. So it’s about investing in those people making them the heroes.

Smile Before Sales

Ryon Ray: I think my one biggest tip, ask for a smile. Before you ask for a sale. That is the best way to do it. Because then you build a fan base in the community and self-promotion. People can check out the book celebrity CEO to be a celebrity in your industry. That’s the key assault. You’re not a celebrity like Kim Kardashian, but a celebrity in your industry.

Provide Value

Brynne: I think it is absolutely vital that you commit to doing this right that you put some time aside, and you put a content calendar. But the biggest mistake people can make is random acts of socializing. We need to come at this as being very purposeful. And the one major thing that will convert a customer from social is really providing value that’s impactful. You should get them thinking differently about their current situation.

Our biggest competitor is the status quo. And if we can’t get them thinking differently, they don’t take action, typically. And so I think the biggest thing is that we are the value that we’re providing creates what we call the pug tail like,

Brooke: We have the tagline think conversation, not campaign, and I stick by that 100%. If you have smart conversations with your community, and you would be customers, they will turn into customers and the magic is there. That’s where the magic happens, right on social media through those conversations.

So have intelligent conversations, meet your customers where they are, and you’re solving their problems. You will have no problems getting customers. The problem why most people are having problems getting customers through social media is because they are not doing any of that.

Treat Customers as VIPs

Jessika : I think the key is just to treat your current customers like VIPs. And to focus on them to solve points like making them hear out and share what they’re saying. Focus on them, make them the influencer of your product, and personalize your approach. Instead of focusing on making a sale, make it like a customer delight department. Focus on that sociality that will draw in your followers to become super fans, your fans, then to become customers. Your customers become advocates and create this great flywheel. It’s just gonna keep growing in momentum.

These are the most important points to consider when turning your customers into super fans. Since these ideas come from the experts, make sure that you pay heed to them.

While thinking about your social media strategy, take a look at your visual identities of the brand. Your logo, brochures, business cards, websites, etc visuals must look unique to your customers. That will help you make an impact on them.

You can rely on Designhill, the leading creative marketplace, to design and redesign your brand visuals in a short period of time. Just get started with your design contest and brief and you will have winning visuals for your brand.

Wrapping Up

A successful social media strategy is the one that helps turn them into loyal customers. So, a business needs to make customers super fans. The expert, therefore, advises brands to use social media in treating customers like VIPs. Businesses should build value and be the resource that customers are looking for on social media.

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