• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Social Media Examiner

Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle

  • 🔥 Free Newsletter
  • ⭐ FREE Web3 Course
  • 🗓️ Our Events
    • Social Media Marketing World (Mar 13-15)
    • Other Industry Events
  • 💡 Society
  • ⚙️ Tools
  • 🎙️ Podcasts
    • Social Media Marketing Podcast
    • Social Media Marketing Talk Show
    • Web3 Business Podcast
    • Our YouTube Channel
  • 🎯 Partner With Us
    • Podcast Sponsorship
    • Email Sponsorship
      • Email Newsletter
      • Dedicated Email Blast
    • Event Sponsorship
      • Social Media Marketing World
    • Tools Sponsorship
  • 👋 About Us
    • Our Story
    • Articles
      • Web3
      • Instagram Marketing
      • Facebook Marketing
      • YouTube Marketing
      • LinkedIn Marketing
      • TikTok Marketing
      • Expert Interviews
  • Search
  • Social Media Marketing World10th annual. Biggest industry event. Get the recordings!IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING

    5 Ways to Improve Customer Loyalty With Social Media

    by Chris Teso / July 4, 2016

    social media how toDo you want to keep more of your customers?

    Looking for ways to nurture customer relationships with social media?

    Social media can play a pivotal role in building more meaningful connections with customers, so they stay with you longer.

    In this article, you'll discover a five-step plan to help you boost customer loyalty with social media.

    use social to nurture customer relationships
    Discover five ways to improve customer loyalty with social media.

    Listen to this article:

    Where to subscribe: Apple Podcast | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

    #1: Listen to Customers

    In addition to monitoring brand sentiment, social listening can play an important role in customer retention. Specifically, you'll want to use social listening to find out:

    • Where your customers congregate on social media
    • Which of your products and services they talk about
    • If they have consistent praises or complaints that you should encourage or address
    • What types of content they consistently share; do they post a lot of photos or use specific hashtags?

    In this tweet, a Levi's customer praises the brand's 541 jeans with the hashtag #Commuter.

    levi's customer tweet
    Use social listening to find out what products and services your customers talk about on social media.

    Many social listening tools let you monitor for these data points. You can use this data to compile content ideas where social outreach might play a significant role post-purchase.

    #2: Outline an Engagement Plan

    Conversion activities are the next step in growing the customer relationship. This is where you proactively provide the value that your customers seek based on your listening. As you deepen customer relationships, a cycle begins where customers provide feedback, you fine-tune the value you provide, and so on.

    Once you establish a level of engagement, develop conversion activities that focus on building a deeper relationship with customers. Here are some key elements to include when you're trying to keep customers involved with your business on social media:

    Create a calendar for your content that ensures ongoing communication and reflects the needs of your business. Make sure that you account for business goals, such as driving in-store sales, promotions around new products, seasonal campaigns, and so on. (More on these ideas in a moment.)

    Define the content, offers, and/or rewards that you'll provide. Use what you've learned about your customers, what they value, and how you can encourage positive behavior while addressing common questions or concerns.

    reward image shutterstock 234009130
    Decide how you will reward people for their loyalty. Image: Shutterstock.

    Create conversion activities that are easy to participate in. With most social activity occurring on mobile, it's critical that any conversion activity you promote is simple to click through and complete, regardless of your consumers' device. Also, people like to remain in their current context, so the more your conversion activities take place in the social environment, the more successful you'll be.

    Identify the data you need to collect to track success, from which campaigns get the most interaction to who is participating.

    3 Days of World-Class Training—Zero Travel!

    Social Media Marketing World

    Travel to Social Media Marketing World off the table? Get all of the great content at a fraction of the price with an On-Demand ticket.

    That’s full access to recordings of every keynote, workshop, and session—the ones people travel thousands of miles to see. Don't wait. Get your On-Demand ticket and enjoy actionable content that you can watch anytime, anywhere.

    GET YOUR ON-DEMAND TICKET NOW

    #3: Identify and Embrace Active Advocates

    For consumers, brand loyalty is tied to the perceived value they get from the relationship. At the same time, marketers know that loyal customers spend more on purchases and save companies significant customer acquisition costs.

    You can use social listening tools to identify social advocates you might target as social VIPs, and then infuse those relationships with value.

    As a first step, ask your loyal customers to self-identify in exchange for a reward of commensurate value (in their eyes) for engaging more deeply with you on social media.

    For example, offer inclusion in a social VIP club in which members are rewarded on an ongoing basis for their participation. In this Facebook post, supermodel Miranda Kerr offers customers a $25 gift card in exchange for joining the VIP program for her cosmetics line, KORA Organics.

    Tools Resource Guide

    Looking for something to make your life easier?

    Discover the tools we recommend to drive engagement, save you time, and boost sales across your entire marketing funnel or business.

    Whether you need help planning content, organizing social posts, or developing your strategy, you’ll find something for every situation.

    FIND YOUR NEXT FAVORITE TOOL

    Because the rewards need to reflect value in your customers' eyes, use the feedback from your VIP base to develop those rewards.

    miranda kerr facebook
    Miranda Kerr offers a reward in exchange for joining a social VIP program.

    Second, proactively identify social VIPs. One way to do this is by “socializing” email. That is, send an email with an embedded social trigger to a targeted group of people from your CRM. Once the email is activated (on the customer's preferred social network), you can encourage participation in a social value exchange.

    In both cases, rewarding your customers first works. Non-profits learned long ago the psychological impact that gifting first has on fundraising efforts: Consumers feel beholden to repay the gift.

    #4: Offer a Rewards Program

    Once you've identified your social VIPs and outlined conversion tactics, it's important to create and maintain a consistent cadence. You want to ensure the value you provide is always perceived as a fair trade for your customers' ongoing loyalty. Ask yourself, “Would I continue participating with this company in exchange for this reward?” If the answer is no, go back to the drawing board.

    To get started, here are several rewards that work well across various audiences and can be tailored to your business and VIPs:

    Provide VIPs with access to unique content that they truly value. Perhaps it's an often-requested recipe, how-to guidance, or a behind-the-scenes video. Sometimes it can be as simple as a “thank you.” In this example, the Orlando City Soccer Club promotes exclusive content to its LionNation members.

    orlando city soccer club facebook
    You can reward VIPs by providing exclusive content.

    Invite social VIPs to a preview or other special event that's limited to this group. If you have an annual event for all of your customers, for example, invite your VIPs to a special early (or after-hours) portion of the event, behind-the-scenes opportunity, or meet and greet with a brand celebrity.

    Offer an upgrade or sneak peek. Are you launching a new product, property, store, or route? Offer VIPs an early peek, access, or upgrade. In addition to retaining customers, this tactic helps you grow advocacy for a product launch.

    If the social VIPs are members of your brand's loyalty program, let them earn loyalty program points through social interaction.

    Whenever possible, personalize your offers and give your VIPs the opportunity to look ahead to the next promotion. For example, if the holiday shopping season is around the corner, let your VIPs in on your holiday promotion plans. They'll often provide early feedback and reward you with their loyalty for incorporating their ideas.

    #5: Measure Response

    Ultimately, success is defined by growing customer retention and spend. A good way to track this is to capture social IDs and self-identifying data (like an email address) in your conversion activities that you can link together in your CRM and throughout the sales process. Some companies tie this directly to their ecommerce and sales systems or through loyalty programs.

    In addition to directly measuring sales, look for growth in social engagement and social following. As your customers share more, they create a virtual snowball effect of brand advocacy and social proof among their own networks, increasing other people's interest in your business.

    Conclusion

    Social media can (and should) play a critical role in maintaining the customer relationship, and even more in growing lifetime customer value.

    You can encourage greater loyalty and customer lifetime value by incorporating these five tactics into your social media program. In the process, you'll grow social customer retention with a lasting business impact.

    What do you think? Have you tried these tactics to connect with loyal customers? What techniques have worked for you? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

    Reward photo from Shutterstock.
    Tips on five ways to use social media to boost customer loyalty.
    Tips on five ways to use social media to boost customer loyalty.

    Get Your FREE Course: Web3 for Beginners

    Web 3 for Beginners

    Curious about Web3, but don't know where to start or who to trust?

    Introducing Web3 for Beginners, a course taught by Michael Stelzner, the founder of Social Media Examiner.

    Learn the basics of Web3 and apply it to your business with this FREE comprehensive course.


    CLICK HERE TO GET FREE ACCESS

    About the authorChris Teso

    As founder and CEO of Chirpify, Chris invented "​in-stream​ transactions", enabling brands to create a currency exchange between social media and loyalty programs to drive member acquisition, engagement, and spend.
    Other posts by Chris Teso Âť

    Get Social Media Examiner’s Future Articles in Your Inbox!

    Get our latest articles delivered to your email inbox and get the FREE Social Media Marketing Industry Report (39 pages, 50+ charts)!

    Industry Report Cover

    Worth Exploring:

    Facebook

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Instagram

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    YouTube

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Linkedin

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Web3

    Marketing Help Explore More →

    Social Media Marketing Industry Report

    Get Free Report →

    Social Marketing Trends

    The data you've been missing!

    Need a new plan? Discover how marketers plan to change their social activities in the 14th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It reveals what marketers have planned for their social activities, content marketing, and more! Get this free report now and never miss another great article from us. Join more than 400,000 marketers!

    Enter your email to get
    our free report:


    Footer

    Your Guide to the Social Media Jungle
    Copyright © 2023 Social Media ExaminerÂŽ
    All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy.

    Helpful Links

    • About us
    • Our content via email
    • Our podcasts
    • Our YouTube channel
    • Our live show
    • Our industry report
    • Sponsorship opportunities
    • RSS
    • Accessibility