Is Your Brand Doing All the Talking?

Every company wants to gain trust and credibility, and conversations with customers can do just that. So... Is your brand doing all the talking?

Nothing's worse than sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher. Not only could you be doing too much talking, but it ends up being boring to the customer.

How much are you talking to your customers? How much are you letting your customers talk to you?

Often times companies will be too focused on what they want to say, and not enough about what their customers want to say. It is essential for companies to encourage customers to voice their opinions and concerns to survive in the marketplace.

Here's a few ways to encourage customers' interest to create conversation.

The Importance Of:

A Blog

Having a blog will allow various people from your company voice their opinions and suggestions that relate to company functions. This will give your company a personality and will make it appear open to conversation.

The more important element of a blog is the allowance for conversation where anyone can post comments. Not only will customers feel empowered to post, but others that read comments between you and another customer will trust you more. The mere fact that conversation has happened will increase your credibility.

And remember, it's great if people can post on your blog, but it's even better if you respond to them and create a conversation. Sharing thoughts will strengthen your image and trust in the eyes of the customer.

An Engaging Social Media Presence

Being active on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. will increase your chances for brand recognition. More people will want to follow you if you are interactive with them- it's as simple as that.

Responding in a timely manner to comments or questions will show that you care for customers. This creates an overall better brand image for your company. Once you have created conversations with customers, more and more people will start to join in and interact with you.

Social media conversations are just as important as blog interaction. Even though social media comments may be shorter, you are still increasing your company's prominence in the market. If you increase the channels you are interactive with customers on, you increase the chances of people interacting with your company and gaining trust.

Personalized Emails

Creating a personalized email can do a lot for a customer. You look like you care more when you take the time to create a 'personal' conversation between you and and a customer. There are easy ways to create a personal email now, HubSpot has set up a great and easy way to personalize emails.

So your customer will receive an email with their name in it, but how will this be interactive? Choose an actual email sender from your company. Include the same email as the person who signed the email. This way it looks even more personalized, and people know who to respond to if they have a question. The basic 'noreply@yourcompany.com' makes your email feel like it's automated (even though everyone's is).

Not only will your email seem like it's a personal conversation between you and a customer, but the customer will actually be able to send you an email back! This creates yet another way for customers to interact with your company.