Roman Alexander Wellington, who is an American business mogul that has founded nine companies and dozens of brands, believes that brands should be doing more when it comes to utilizing social media to build the trust and credibility of their brands.
He is no stranger to the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of Social Media Marketing. Mr. Wellington is ranked as one of the Top 10 Digital Marketing Consultants in the USA, has founded three multi-award-winning marketing and PR firms, has written multiple books on the subject, and has 20 years of experience under his belt. Needless to say, when he starts talking about marketing and social media, people listen.
“It is becoming increasingly more imperative for companies to maintain trust with their customers, as social media has made it possible for a dissatisfied customer to broadcast their views (justified or not) across the world in an instant. However, by focusing on building brand loyalty through social media marketing, companies can combat the risk of losing customers to poor service or unmet expectations.” – Mr. Wellington stated.
While I do love my phone and miss the hours that seem to go missing while using it, I’m no expert when it comes to brand-building, or using social media to do so. When we sent Mr. Wellington a few questions asking him to delve a little deeper into his thoughts on this issue … honestly, we were just expecting some short replies from the CEO, or an “I’m too busy”.
Instead, we were beyond pleasantly surprised when he sent us a whole opinion piece on it. Our editors have asked Mr. Wellington if we could share what he sent to us with our readers, to which he thankfully agreed.
We hope you will find it as interesting, and thought-provoking, as we did.
** The following opinion piece was written by Roman Alexander Wellington and is being shared with The Ritz Herald readers, with his consent **
Why Is Social Media More Important Now Than Ever Before?
Social media not only gives companies a platform to engage with the customers they have currently, but also provides an avenue to reach new customers at rates never before possible.
The borderless reach of today’s social networks makes it incredibly easy for the opinions of others … from social media influencers to your quirky aunt … to be shared easily, and at lightning speeds.
Depending on how quickly a company or brand can react to something blowing up on social media, will determine whether that speed and broad reach will be a positive, or negative for their business.
Beware the Micro-Influencer …
Social media has rapidly given rise to “micro-influencers”. Yes, there are still “big influencers”, but they have far less impact on consumer behavior than most people realize. The influencers that brands really need to focus on are the “micro-influencers” … meaning the soccer dad, stressed-out single mom with two jobs, or the friendly neighborhood postman.
A pissed-off mom with a Twitter account can do FAR more damage to a company than a big influencer ever could … but on the flip side, that same mom could become your biggest brand ambassador. And won’t ask for some absurd paycheck to do so.
Social media has evened the playing field when it comes to how and where consumers interact with a brand. It has created an environment where a business is only ever one post away from their brand message being shared around the world.
Any brand that wants to survive, needs to be doing everything in their power to make sure that their message is consistent, positive, and focused on maintaining and building trust with their consumer base.
Social media provides an incredible opportunity for businesses to build trust with their audiences on a daily basis. An audience that will in turn, spread the word about the brand through their social networks at record speeds. As such, these micro-influencer relationships, are paramount to a company’s success.
Social Media Provides an Opportunity To Build or Re-Build Credibility
The sheer size of today’s social networks, not only allows brands to engage with current customers, but also gives them the chance to attract new ones they may have never even thought of pursuing. By providing a platform for consumers to share their opinions on products and services (positive or negative), social media platforms provide brands with a unique opportunity to see potential issues before they get out of hand, or find out which products/services their consumers love the most.
If social media is a major part of a brand’s business strategy, they need to make sure that all social content they produce is focused on reinforcing the brand’s image, and includes social messaging that encourages the social sharing of that image. This allows for the brand to maintain their credibility, through reliability.
Credibility is key in today’s online world where trust is hard to gain, and easy to lose. So, if people see that others have shared positive opinions about a company’s products or services, they will likely follow suit.
How Can Brands Use Social Media to Create Brand Loyalty and Credibility In Today’s Competitive Market Place?
Before social media, customers would usually find out about a product or service via word-of-mouth, so it would be harder for brands to track what customers were thinking/hearing about their products and services in live time.
By using social media platforms, however, customers can now easily share their thoughts on products and brands and expect a prompt response. This gives brands the opportunity to act quickly on what they see needs improving, and ensure that they keep the loyalty of their consumer base by showing they are actually listening to them.
By using social media platforms to educate, engage, and listen to their customers … businesses can improve brand equity by building trust and credibility with customers on a daily basis.
This can be done in four primary ways: social interactions, native social ads, social credibility content, and social proof.
1. Social Interactions – encourage people to give opinions about a brand by answering any questions they may have about it via quick-style social posts, like Twitter chats for example. The more a brand can quickly interact with their audience, the more likely they are to engage with the business and share positive experiences of them.
2. Native Social Media Ads – native ads allow businesses to promote a post onto their feeds that look like “regular” content, and not marketing creative. Meaning that when a consumer interacts with it, the social platform is encouraged to show that ad to the other connections of the consumer. The more social interactions a native-styled ad has, the higher its reach will be, which means more social proof for the brand.
3. Social Credibility Content – creating content that is of interest to your customer base will encourage them to engage with you by liking or sharing that content. Brands are showing customers that they are a brand they can trust, because they are focusing on producing the type of the content the consumer actually wants/needs.
Businesses need to spend as much time as they can researching what type of posts their audience engages with most, so that when it comes to creating social media campaigns and spending those ad dollars, they know exactly what type of messaging they will get the best responses from.
4. Social Proof – social proof comes in the form of likes, retweets, social shares, and comments. Brands can easily and quickly obtain social proof by asking their fans to tag a friend on an Instagram photo, or retweet a post about a new product launch.
This provides social proof and encourages more people to engage with the brand because it shows that other like-minded people like their content.
Why It’s More Important Now Than Ever Before For Companies to Focus On Building and Maintaining The Trust of Their Customers
Social media is an effective communication tool that allows businesses to directly interact with customers, answer questions, and resolve issues very quickly.
This level of interaction doesn’t exist anywhere else – social networks are online communities where all members are communicating with one another, constantly.
Because social networks are so powerful, it is important for companies to focus on building the trust of their potential and current customers by providing excellent “social media customer service” if you will.
Building this trust via the power of social media will help increase sales, establish brand credibility, and enhance the overall reputation of any business that takes it seriously.
To learn more about Roman Alexander Wellington, readers can visit his website at romanalexanderwellington.com, or check him out on Twitter or Instagram.
