How Social Media Can Impact Fan Sentiment

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One of the most rewarding and fulfilling aspects of being a community manager is the ability to engage with a brand’s core fan base each day. Community management offers brands the opportunity to speak with fans in real-time – one of the things that make social media so unique and valuable, and most importantly, integral to a business’s growth.

Fans want to feel like they are valued by the brand and are a part of the team.  While customer service is an integral part of a social media campaign, when a brand can elicit positive emotions on social media from a follower, chances are, you’ve done your job correctly. How you choose to interact with your followers is extremely important in the realm of sentiment. Positive word-of-mouth and sales leads are the goal, and keeping tabs on fan sentiment about your brand can offer key insights that can affect your businesses bottom line.

 

Here are four ways your brand can engage its fan base and increase positive sentiment:

 

  1. Utilize Hashtags:By creating a unique hashtag for your brand, you can easily listen to and join conversations your fans are engaging in. Pro tip: Hashtags for entering a contest or creating evergreen hashtags can help you track and monitor communications about your brand.
  2. Build Relationships: Start conversations with fans who interact with your brand and engage with them on other relevant topics aside from your brand. Liking their photos or commenting about a topic can often transform a fan into a brand advocate.
  3. Cultivate Advocates: These are the fans who consistently talk about your brand and jump into conversations with you daily. Advocates are essential to community growth. Plus, their word-of-mouth praise can drive new business for the brand.
  4. Take Advantage of Giveaways: Nothing says “I appreciate you” more than rewards. When a brand reaches out to its loyal followers and rewards them with product, the fan is typically overwhelmed with joy. Even if the fan was originally impartial to the brand, a giveaway or a prize can be the point at which they become true brand advocates.
  5. User Generated Content: Sharing fans’ content on your brand’s channels can bolster engagement and brand affinity not only from the fan but also new potential customers. Seeing that real people use your product in their everyday life can be more of a motivation to purchase than any other methods of promotion.

Mastering the Art of Live-Tweeting During Events

In this day and age, businesses want to be part of relevant conversations that help create awareness, drive traffic and build a community where engagement between a brand and its audience is celebrated and meaningful.  So it’s no surprise that live-tweeting has become a focal point of many brands that try engaging relevant audiences by participating in conversations around live events as they happen.

But what exactly is live-tweeting and how does it differ from common/day-to-day tweeting? It’s actually pretty simple, and is the act of tweeting around a live event as it happens.

There isn’t a single correct way to live-tweet; at its core, live-tweeting is supposed to be organic, conversational and in real-time but there are tips that will help facilitate live-tweeting as a company.

  1.  Use the correct hashtag in the conversation.  Many live events broadcasted by major channels create a hashtag specifically for the event.  Make sure you are reaching the right groups of people by using these hashtags.  If there is more than one hashtag you can use them, but don’t go hashtag crazy and use a different hashtag for every tweet you put out.  If you’re hosting the live-tweet, make sure you let your followers know ahead of time the hashtag you will be using to facilitate the conversation so they know what hashtag they should be using.
  2. Tag the people and companies that are relevant to the event in your tweets when you mention them.  Who knows, you might get a retweet, mention or follow from that person.  Remember, live-tweeting is all about engagement!
  3. Don’t go to Twitter jail.  There is such a thing as being locked out of Twitter for over-tweeting.  The rules of not landing in Twitter jail are: don’t go over 100 tweets an hour (this includes retweets), 1,000 tweets a day or more than 250 Direct Messages a day. Over-tweeting can also overwhelm your followers.  If you find yourself locked up with the blue bird, it can take an hour or more before you can tweet again.  Time is everything during live events, so be mindful of how often you are tweeting so you don’t miss out on the conversation.
  4. Engage, engage, engage.  The real magic of live-tweeting is that it allows you  to connect with people who might share a similar interest, so make sure you monitor the hashtag you are live-tweeting about and start relevant conversations with others around the topic being discussed.
  5. Track your conversations.  Using social measurement tools (like Co-Tweet or Bit.ly) help you keep track of any relevant hashtags and also keep track of click-throughs to any links you might have tweeted during the event.

Live-tweeting is a great way for brands to connect with consumers and if done right can be a great way to get new followers, and expose your brand to new customers.  Remember to have fun, put some thought into your tweets and interact with people having the same discussion to get the most out of your live-tweets!

The Media Landscape Has Evolved – Have You Kept Up?

Twitter. To some, it means keeping track of news, sports, celebrities, and tracking your favorite food truck. To others, it’s just another platform that wastes time. There are also those who aren’t sure what it is and if it’s important. No matter your personal feelings about the microblogging service, it has inserted itself into many facets of or lives. It seems that hashtags are everywhere- even Facebook adopted them in June of 2013.

Perhaps no community has embraced it more than the media. With a few years under their collective journalistic belt, Twitter has evolved into an indispensable tool for many looking to not only connect and share stories, but to find sources and stay abreast of headlines. PR pros have also taken note, and used the medium as an extension of the symbiotic relationship of exchanging information to create compelling stories. At least the good ones have.

So, how can Twitter help land your next placement? First, it’s important to engage. Keep in mind Twitter is a community, and hollow attempts at pitching journalists will often be met with silence. Start by following journalists who cover beats you not only enjoy reading about, but also beats that are related to your clients. By following the conversation (and participating with a RT), you’ll reap the benefits of continuing your own education about the topic.

It’s also important to pay attention. We’ve been able to help journalists who have tweeted a story idea or a need for a source or product. If you can assist, let them know with a reply, and follow up with an email as quickly as possible with more information.  It’s also important to pay attention to other topics and be helpful when you can. We recently connected a journalist who was looking for freelance writers with someone looking for freelance work.

Create value. If you find something unique, newsworthy, funny, inspiring, or clever, share it! By actively participating in the community, you’ll be able to make connections and expand your own network.

The moral, as so many of them are, is to use common sense, be helpful and pay attention.