At Content Savants, we have been receiving some interest among clients regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence and chat bot services on their websites.  To be sure, there has been quite a bit of growth in this area, and off-the-shelf applications are making it possible for small businesses to afford and implement the service on their websites.  Having this technology available on a company website can convey tendencies toward innovation with an orientation toward cutting edge technology.

It can also drive your customers insane and totally destroy any notion of building a personal relationship with your customers.  For telecommunications companies – the ones who really don’t want to talk to you no matter how personable they try to make you feel – chat bots are a perfect way to manage high volumes of customer calls (to be sure, if their services were well-designed to begin with, customers wouldn’t need to dial up customer service). 

Nonetheless, expectations on the part of customers to receive a fast response are increasing.  As your business grows (thanks, in part, to your social media marketing efforts), you will also have greater interactions from a larger base of customers.  Customers may let a small business slide in terms of response times, but large companies should know better.  So it begs the question, is offering a chat bot to respond to customer queries better than a slight delay in response? 

In our view, it is better, if it helps your customer to feel in control.  Chat bots are more effective when inquiries are standard, and where customers use standard language or nomenclature that a computer can recognize and respond to.  For customers who are less grammatically inclined, and which may have individualized inquiries, chat bots will be an enormous frustration. 

The important question to ask is, does the customer have an alternative?  If the alternative is easily available and clearly visible – such as a direct line number to call or an email for customer service – then chat bots can be very convenient for customers seeking a quick reply on an easy question. 

Otherwise, we recommend avoiding chat bots like the plague.  The time and effort you will need to spend in repairing your customer relationship will not be worth the menial savings in customer response time (not to mention the expense in licensing and development costs).

For most business owners, the whole reason behind publishing blogs, memes and other online comment is to increase sales and, ultimately, profitability.  So many advertising agencies like to talk about branding, awareness, brand equity, engagement, and so many other fancy industry words, that often times the core purpose of advertising – increasing sales – can be quickly forgotten. 

There is no doubt that business awareness and branding are important, but only insofar as there is a direct chain of causality (whether clearly defined or not) which leads to more purchases than what would have occurred were it not for the marketing campaign. 

The good news for businesses with a strong online presence is that data continues to show, increasingly, that customers are using the internet to inform their purchases.  Whether by direct purchasing online, or through research that slowly builds over time and ultimately leads to a purchase, businesses which make information about themselves and their products/services available online are benefitting.

In this way, branding and awareness are not just abstract marketing concepts.  Issues of trust, customer identity (how they will identify with your business), and cultivation of positive association are all key to your content development strategy.  A 2018 report by Mary Meeker noted that among those who discovered a product on social media, 55% would purchase the product at a later time.  Facebook remains the leading platform through which the idea of purchasing something (any new product) is seeded in someone’s mind.

Making information like this useful requires a long term play in social media theme and content development.  While small business marketing teams may not have the time and resources to plan out a comprehensive, multi-year marketing campaign, there are some essential questions to answer, which when studied, lay the foundation to long term content development that can enable positive customer responses, ensure memory retention of your business, and trigger purchase decisions when customers are ready to make a move.

Two key considerations to include in your social media content development efforts:

• Convey an understanding of your audience:  To do that, you clearly need to understand your customers and what motivates them.  More than just having a mental understanding of your customers, however, developing content which conveys an understanding is important to connecting with them.  Content which is personally meaningful to customers will mentally stick.  This mental stickiness between your business, its products/services, and their personal lives is what will bring them back when the time is right.
• Track your messages and their success:  Without a comprehensive tracking program to monitor your social media postings and their responses, it will be difficult for you to discern over time which techniques and messages are most effective.  While all marketing efforts must point to the end game result (more sales), interim results can tell you a lot about how effectively you are reaching customers.  Keep track of engagement statistics, and be sure to actively respond to customer comments and direct message inquiries.

Engaging directly with customers includes responding to individual inquiries as well as replying to emails and direct messages on your full range of social media accounts.  This effort can be time consuming and tedious, and more often than not, your attention is focused on a few, loud, high-maintenance customers.  Too much attention risks diverting resources away from development of fresh and original social media posts.  Too little time risks alienating key customers. 

Nonetheless, as search engine algorithms increase in complexity, and marketing budgets from larger competitors increases, small business owners still have leverage.  Small scale remains a blessing on social media, and search engines are increasingly taking note of your response.  Facebook already publishes a response time on your website, so that customers who send in inquiries can now approximately how long it will take for them to receive a reply.  Fortunately their calculation weighs recent activity stronger than previous performance, therefore this metric is one which is well within your control to improve upon. 

Facebook also started (in 2018) tracking the content of responses, rating higher those with characteristics of genuine interaction.  The precise metrics (or words and phrases) they look for remain a secret, but it underscores the importance of ensuring your online content remains authentic, conversational, and in natural language. 

Search engines are also using comment performance data to rank your website.  Key words and diverse content are not enough to rank well on organic searches.  Comments and quick responses to comments are also tracked on major social media platforms, as well as your own online website. 

While replies to comments – as always – must be unique, the good news is that they do not need to be lengthy.  A short comment which addresses the user’s question or comment (likely by repeating key words in a meaningful context) will be seen as more relevant. 

The real challenge is to invoke user responses without specifically asking for it.  In other words, asking your followers to respond by liking, sharing the post, or adding views to the “comments below” are being de-prioritized.  Social media platforms are aiming to discourage the use of customer baiting as a way to artificially inflate their engagement numbers (there is some doubt as to whether or not these methods work in any case). 

The important thing to remember is that for search engines and social media platforms, the fundamental goal is, as always, to reward original and high quality content.  Social media consultants always try to get around these rules by streamlining content creation and development and by using little tricks to encourage people to engage more in their platforms.  Such tactics can produce short-term results, but the more they are used, the more the major online platforms tend to focus on ways to cut down their effectiveness. 

Online content which attracts attention is informative, interesting, and engaging.  Fortunately, each online posting does not need to be an Ivy League level research paper (that wouldn’t be very engaging anyway).  It does require that content providers raise their level of art, and that content continue to be fresh and original. Fresh and original content requires research, practice and consistency. 

In order to continue engaging your customers effectively and efficiently, we recommend the following steps be incorporated into your social media strategy:

• Focus on the purpose:  every social media or blog posting has a purpose.  Usually, the actual purpose is to attract customer attention in a way that converts to sales.  As a posting, that is not very interesting, but some businesses may take the approach that any content is good content.  We would agree that often times any original and new content is better than no content (although not always), for only a little additional effort, businesses can research trends or interesting topics relevant to their line of work, and develop themes around that.  The benefit of a theme-driven development plan is that it naturally lends itself to numerous new blogs and social media postings, as in a series of articles, which can then build customer interest and interaction over time (think, 3-part movie series).  A purpose-driven approach to content development is then the first step in truly engaging customers.
• Keep it crisp:  classic instruction to public speakers goes something like, “get up, speak up, then shut up.”  Customers are much more drawn to savor your content when it is presented straight and to the point.
• Develop key motivators:  you know your customers and what motivates them.  Is your business emotionally driven?  Fill your content with stories and images of excitement, hope, dreams and other emotional themes.  Are your customers seeking assurances of competence?  Particularly true for healthcare and legal professionals, fill your content with themes of strength and leadership.  Whatever is most appropriate for your specific business, there are key motivators which you can weave into your social media messaging.

All of these activities can be done within your current social media strategy, and over time will help to increase engagement of customers and interest in your business offer.

There are many important aspects about social media consulting, and at the end of the day the most important factor in choosing a good social media consultant is that there is a good rapport between the consultant and the client.  The importance here is that the working relationship be collaborative and transparent. 

When it comes to developing content that is appropriate for the business, nearly everything will be original and custom.  There is no assembly line for custom-made content.  There are processes which can be followed, but as a creative profession, any process or otherwise, attempt to streamline development, will always have exceptions.  There is no McDonald’s of good content development.

With that in mind, there are a few other traits that businesses tend to look for, rightly or wrongly, and these are discussed below:

• Experience:  Much is said of choosing a social media consultant with substantial experience.  For many skilled professions, we know that perfection comes from practice.  While there is some merit to this idea in the context of social media marketing, there are some other things to keep in mind:  those who are highly experienced may follow a more pro forma approach, and be inflexible to changing methods or adapting to new trends.  This point is critical, as with social media, the landscape changes so quickly, your social media consultant should be equally adaptable.  Where there is a lot of change, there is nobody who has “experience” in what is new.  Businesses which highlight a long list of clients without also speaking of the fast-changing landscape and the need to continually learn and adapt their methods may be avoided.
• One-stop shop:  Larger marketing agencies will promote their potential to do a wide range of tasks, from graphic design to content writing and campaign management.  These firms often charge a hefty premium for their one-stop solutions.  Businesses which operate on a large scale may find added value from hiring out online marketing, enabling them to focus on their core product or service offer.  For smaller businesses, however, there is little justification for this premium service.  In many cases, a small consultant which can offer reliable and regular service in blog writing, meme development or PPC campaign management is sufficient, and offers much greater value for money.
• Creativity:  As a core part of the marketing process, advertising and content development are by nature creative activities.  Younger agencies often take a bold approach to their own business promotion by using unconventional terminology in describing their services, or even individual titles (the CEO of a now-defunct marketing agency in the US had taken the title “Grand Poubar” – perhaps to show that his organization was hip?).  Having a little fun with the process is quite an attractive proposition for many customers, but creativity is serious business and very challenging.  Whatever the CEO calls himself or herself, the important factor is that they take their marketing work seriously.
• Analytics:  Online marketing is becoming increasingly sophisticated.  It is no longer just about posting a web page and adding some product descriptions.  That is good news for people who are comfortable with numbers.  Collecting information on your online performance, and then turning this information into meaningful analysis which can help to guide future activity is critical to optimizing your online performance.  This type of activity is helpful for businesses that already have a sophisticated marketing plan.  For small and medium-sized businesses, there is little that detailed optimization can do that consistent and frequent online activity (postings, blogs, customer replies, memes and other video/graphics shares) cannot do.  In other words, for SMEs, the key is consistency.  Knowing your customers and tracking some high-level metrics is helpful and important for monitoring the effectiveness of your content, but at this stage in the game, few businesses need in-depth customer analytics, what they really need is consistency.

While all of these points are helpful for social media consultants, what is most important will depend on your business situation.  In summary:

• Experience brings knowledge and skill, but adaptability to a quickly changing market landscape is even more important.
• The convenience offered by a one-stop-shop agency is attractive, but also comes at a price.  With a little self-management, businesses can get substantial value for money from smaller, specialized consultants.
• Creativity is essential, but the working relationship with the consultant is even more important.  Non-creative messages which are relevant to your business and its audience are far more valuable than creativity for the sake of creativity.
• Data analytics are developing quickly, however they are so far more useful in optimizing a campaign for a very large audience.  Small and medium-sized businesses should first focus on consistency and frequency – on “making noise”.  All other data metrics are vanity.

The story format was introduced to social media in 2018 by Snapchat, and soon after the other platforms followed suit.  This unique little approach has been highly popular, particularly among Millennials:  nearly 68% of millennials read stories on Instagram.  On Facebook, it is just under half. 

The immense popularity of this format is also turning heads with social media marketers and content developers.  And why wouldn’t it?  True content development is unique, interesting, personal and original.  Whereas it is easy to forward a meme and hope for a large following to develop, creating online stories is, by its very nature, a personal process.

Stories are more than just writing blogs, they tailor issues and topics to show a personal perspective.  Their ease of creation have been a primary driver of their popularity, but the authenticity is what engages readers and help them form an emotional connection with the writer. 

Story content is short-lived, so businesses which make use of this format can do so as a one-time effort to gauge response, and then if positive, may re-align their marketing budget (most likely weighing its effectiveness against blog writing) to enable the best possible engagement with customers. 

Because stories are of a personal nature, they can be more effectively used to make a personal connection with customers over time.  They are not necessarily calls to action if an immediate online transaction is your primary goal.  Nonetheless, if building relationships with customers over time is seen as a value-added marketing strategy, stories should be considered and then tested as a routine marketing activity.