Summary:
How can you interact with people you never see face to face? Technology provides a means to make these connections. It is important that these relationships be well maintained in order to convert them to reap the benefit of your business.
These relationships can be developed in a variety of ways, each having their own unique benefits depending on the nature of the business. This article will detail three ways to build these relationships: interviewing experts, engaging with people on social media, and sharing other’s content.
The internet has created an interesting dynamic between buyer and seller. At one time, all interactions were face to face. People would visit a store, interact with a sales person or consultant, and then go forward with a sale. This interaction was typically vital to the sale, and therefore the business owner placed a high value on the store’s customer service. Rarely do these face-to-face interactions occur anymore.
Now a significant amount of customer and store interaction occurs online. However, this does not mean customer service and interaction is no longer important.
If you are seeing a decrease in interaction, you may also be seeing a decrease in revenue. Online relationships are just as important today as face-to-face interactions once were. So how do you navigate this new world in order to optimize online relationships so that they convert?
1) Interview
People want to hear from experts who can share their insider knowledge. With this in mind, it could be extremely beneficial for you and your company if you spend time interviewing experts in areas closely tied to your business. You could make these interviews a guest post on your blog, and as long as they are relevant to your product or service, they don’t even need to directly mention what you are trying to sell.
Not only is this a great way to share valuable information with your customer, but it also helps you build a relationship with the influencer as well. Most experts would be more than willing to guest post if they were approached in an appropriate and professional manner.
- Reach out to the expert via LinkedIn or email.
- Introduce yourself and your business.
- Detail why you are reaching out, and what you are looking for.
- Explain why you believe their opinion could benefit your business.
- Offer them the opportunity to be the expert option on the manner by guest posting for you.
- Detail how you’ll provide exposure for them, through social media shares, mentions, and links back to their site.
2) Engage
In addition to reaching out to experts, it is also important to connect with other customers and clients. Much of this occurs through social media interactions. Obviously, it would become tedious to interact with every single person who comments on every single social media medium. By choosing to utilize a free CRM system to practice social listening and finding touch points, you can save time through this process and engage with people from a conversation-first perspective.
3) Share
Your social media relationships cannot be one-sided. It is important that you not only interact with comments on your own posts, but also that you interact with other people’s posts. If you read a post that you believe is relevant to your own product or service, be sure to comment on it or even share it for your own viewers. This can help you develop mutual relationships and even partnerships. Odds are, these people will likely return the favor and share your posts down the road. This not only helps your relationship with the business, but this will also help you achieve exposure to that businesses’ own clients and customers. This relationship will double as a way for you to market to a whole new demographic.
Sometimes the best way to market it to build relationships. Social media and the internet provides an ideal platform for this. You don’t have to be a door-to-door digital salesman to create these connections. In fact, you don’t have to be a pest at all. Just be a friend on social media and a partner that your readers will want to side with.
If you want a way to manage all these steps in one easy system, consider HubSpot’s free CRM. This free system will help you to speed up sales by automating the tasks that are an inconvenience to growing your business, such as data entry, interactions tracking, and organizing contacts.
Elijah Masek-Kelly is the founder of Powerful Outreach, a non-traditional PR agency that specializes in Press and Guest Post Outreach. With a long history as a PR specialist, Content Marketer, and a Writer, Elijah has helped small and large brands tell incredible stories.