How does your business use your social media accounts? If you’re like most businesses, you think about attracting new customers, marketing, and branding through Facebook and Twitter. You want to build relationships with your clients and vendors to build your business, but there’s so much more potential to your social media medium. Customers use social media to report problems with a business. How you respond to those complaints will determine if you keep those customers or lose them.

Although you may have phone or email support, most people don’t want to take the time to track down the information and call during business hours. Submitting information through a contact form is impersonal at best, and customers often do not even expect a response because they have no idea who is going to receive the information. Customers want personalized immediacy to their issues, which can be costly for your business to provide.

Why Do People Turn to Social Media?

When your customer gets upset, they want to be heard. If they’re just looking for an answer to a question, they want it now. No one wants to wait which is indicative of the microwave society in today’s world. Social media is more immediate. Expectations for social media is very different from the expectations of email or phone. In a recent study, most people expect your business to respond in 60 minutes or less when they use social media.

Why You Should Care About Answering Your Customers on Social Media

Customer service through social media lets you personalize your brand and the experience of your customers. Instead of going through a phone menu to try and get to a person who can help, your customer asks a question, then gets an answer. It’s a great method to make customers have control and to provide transparency. Potential customers see the transaction and know that you will answer questions promptly. It also encourages more mentions of your brand online, which increases your presence. Not answering questions and complaints may also provide more publicity, but in a negative light. When you provide customer service through social media, you proactively manage your image. Users who reach out to you through social media are more likely to talk about your company.

With social media, follow-up is quick and easy. You can always send a personal note to the customer, but Facebook and Twitter allow you to demonstrate your commitment to providing excellent customer service. It might be overwhelming at first, and you may make some mistakes. In your industry there may be regulatory issues that you have to work around. But the long-term benefits far outweigh the challenges. When you engage with your customers, they will engage with you. If you don’t respond, they will find a business that will. Don’t lose out by ignoring social media. Reply quickly and keep your customers coming back again and again. Contact Blast Creative if you are interested in our Social Media Marketing Services.

If you are a business owner in any of these genres, financial, photographers, dentists, hotels, restaurants, construction, HVAC, hardware stores, real estate, or any business owner and want more information on Internet Marketing, please contact Blast Creative today!

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I’ve been thrown under the bus so many times in my lifetime by business partners, associates and friends that the tread marks have left excruciating scars and I sit here wondering if honesty, integrity and loyalty exists in 2013! I hate not trusting people, but time and time again I get slapped in the face by reality. I recently read an article on Katie Couric’s website:

Want to know how to spot a liar? Here’s how!

From Janine Driver, body language expert and author of “You Can’t Lie to Me.”

Read more here…

Basically you can never be too sure if someone in your life is being dishonest. But you’d think with the age of the Internet and Social Media, people would try to be more honest, because their reputation is on the line-literally! Edward Snowden is a prime example, his life is ruined and he can’t go anywhere in the world without people knowing him and what he did. Kids in high school and college know all too well how one bad decision can end up online and destroy their lives and yet, here we are in 2013 and people continue to be dishonest, show lack of integrity and loyalty. So color me stupid, people just don’t care and that scares me, what is the world going to be like 10 years from now?

According to Webster Integrity is:

Definition of INTEGRITY

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility

2 : an unimpaired condition : soundness

3: the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

And this is Webster’s definition of Integrity for kids:

Main Entry: in·teg·ri·ty
Pronunciation: in-teg-rt-
Function: noun
1 : the condition of being free from damage or defect
2 : total honesty and sincerity
3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided

So you be the judge, is there integrity in the world in 2013? Especially when it comes to business! Has the oil boom and the almighty dollar turned us into a society with no morals, no integrity and no loyalty? In a world where everyone claims to be a Christian, where is God? In Luke 6:31 it says do unto others, as you would have them do unto you! So does that mean I should treat business partners, associates and friends the way that they have treated me. Or how about Exodus 21:24 where it says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth? The biggest lesson that I’ve learned in life is that if someone claims to be a Christian or talks about their faith in God and God has led them to this or that, RUN, RUN for your life! I once believed that Christianity, honesty, integrity and loyalty all worked hand in hand, but I am here to tell you that I was wrong.

Loyalty is something I am finding is almost extinct. Does loyalty exist among brands? Is there customer loyalty? What about loyalty among friends? Coworkers? Do we live in a society where everyone is ready to jump ship and no one is loyal to anyone or anything? Personally, I do not believe that loyalty exists in our world in 2013. Loyalty is important to me and I am loyal to others, but sadly it is not a two-way street. So here I am at a crossroads wondering what I should do. Do I change my morals and values? Do I forget about them altogether? How do we live and survive in a world where the existence of honesty, integrity and loyalty are on the verge of distinction?

The post Honesty, Integrity and Loyalty Do They Exist in 2013? appeared first on Website Design and Marketing.