4 Ways to Add Value and Create a Loyal Fanbase

One of the important aspects of social media marketing is monitoring customer feedback and opinions. It is all about their views.

You would always want people talking good about you and your product/service to their network of friends; similarly you don’t want someone with a bad experience of your service or product to talk negatively about you to his/her social network.

It is important that you retain all the customers with positive and good opinions and also convert the ones with negative or bad opinions into raving fans.

Today, creating loyalty amongst customers is a big task but has tremendous long term benefits. These loyal customers help you in spreading your word across their network, which is what social media is all about in the first place. Here is how to value your fans and followers and create a sense of Loyalty in them.

1. Be Interactive

Shout-out to them, say thanks, mention them and RT them. Reply to their feedback – be it good or bad – in a very gracious and tactful manner. This shows that you have taken their feedback seriously and you mean it.

“Fan of the week” campaigns are a good way to draw attention of your supportive fans. It is simple and automatic, you don’t have to do much about selecting, but once they are announced you can congratulate them personally and can even rewards them.

There would be some good and some not so good reviews, so make sure you acknowledge all of them.

2. Make Them Feel Special: Reward and Recognize the Loyalty

If you want your fans or followers to be loyal, then you need to make sure that they know what is in store for the loyal customers. Loyalty doesn’t come that easy. There should be certain rewards or privileges of being loyal customer, and everyone should know about them.

The simplest example here will be frequent flier miles.

These rewards need not necessarily burn a hole in your pocket. They can be simple, small yet something that would make a person feel special about being your regular customer and to know that you value their loyalty.

No doubt, you would definitely get fake, discount seeking loyal customers who would be more interested in the added advantage. But give them what they want and they’ll in return give you what you want – a good customer feedback.

The value for them is in the discount, not the brand. To connect gifts and loyalty, make sure your gift solves a different set problem for your fans. If you are a B2B brand, you can offer discounts on event tickets, a free consulting hours or free enrolment in a training session. Use your imagination here.

3.  Say What They Want to Hear

When it comes to content creation by an organization and content sharing by users, there is a wide gap between what users want and what an organization delivers. One of the basic steps of good social media engagement of any brand is  listening to what customers wants to hear.

Don’t just keep on feeding the content what you want to feed, instead give them what they want and they would help you get that across their network. Understanding the their mentality and expectations may take some time but once you know it, make sure you follow them.

4. Solve Their Problems

A good example of this would be that of telecom companies, whatever your problem is they would get in touch with you (in most of the cases) and help you out with your problem. Why? Because your reviews or feedback is going to affect their potential customer base, and they don’t want to lose out on them.

Similarly, you need to solve your customer’s problems or at least make an effort towards doing that. This would make customer feel happy about the fact that his/her complaint was heard and some efforts were made towards it.

This will not only help you in connecting immediately with those people but also with all those who have similar needs and situations. Make sure you have a dedicated team for the same.

If you want to do it more effectively, you can use weekly/monthly feedback session, who knows you might get an amazing suggestion. It builds trust and respect towards the organization and who doesn’t like being respected?

Even though value-adding takes a lot of research and work, it pays the highest rewards. And that is how you start with creating a loyal fan base. The more you engage with your fans, the better you’ll be able to do it.

How do you add value to your fans? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

Featured Image by: Ethan Hein