The digital world offers so many opportunities and different techniques that are commonly overlooked. However, every company that wants to succeed in the digital world needs to be present on social media to connect with its customers, engage them and create new solutions collaboratively.
Numerous social networks such as YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and many others media are guided by relationships and the exchange of professional and personal experiences.
As the numbers and importance of social media have increased over the last years, some scholars have adapted the 4Cs of marketing and applied them to social networks and that’s exactly what I am going to show you in this article.
Companies must apply the 4Cs to participate in social media:
- Content
- Conversation/communication
- Community
- Connection
Content
It is the key to building strong customer relationships. Creating valuable content is the glue for any social media. With valuable information, any business will be able to know its customers’ needs and find the correct path to reach them.
Social media content is not necessarily about lots of text and explanations. It can include 140-character tweets, photos, brief product updates or FAQs. And something that is often overlooked is simply sharing the valuable content of others. Provide insights that match your customers’ needs.
Conversation
The communication, in turn, is cooperative, a customer-oriented approach to the task of selling products. Virtual communication has facilitated and expanded communication between people, increasing the power of word of mouth. And it has caused, once again, changes in the market, because the digital medium started to be another form of communication, dissemination and promotion.
Community
A community is a gathering of people who have an interest in your company’s products and services. This type of group is held willingly, where there is trust placed in your company and in the products acquired by your brand. People join or create a social community for the purpose to discuss a public issue, where they always want to be part of some community to share some knowledge or to learn new things.
Social networking sites involve people from all over the world and provide a platform to share their personal thoughts. In the company’s vision, the community is important to show to the clients and possible clients about their services and products, which aim to interact with the public, make contacts, and share experiences. It is possible to create your own community and the most suitable social media is Facebook.
The idea is always to generate relationships between the company and the target audience. This relationship is based on people’s trust and collaboration, whether by proximity, resonance (frequency), or relevance (credibility, authority), through content shared in the community.
On LinkedIn, it is also possible to follow groups – virtual meeting rooms (or forums) – related to your expertise, where you can find professionals in the same industry or with similar interests to share their insights and experiences. While it is true that there are few good LinkedIn Groups, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t useful for all businesses. Some of these groups do not have a great reputation or many of them are filled with self-promotion and spam rather than valuable discussions and meaningful interactions. In addition the most important is always to remember: the more people who know your brand, share your content, and collaborate with your company, the more strength your community will have. Building and keeping a community together, whether on a membership site or social media, rides on consistent and continuous effort. You need to post content regularly, answer questions, leave comments, and ask your users to engage.
Connection:
The Need to maximize the number of users who will interact with your Content, Conversations and Community. As nowadays we have lots of different social media, so it is important to spend time and focus on the social media that really matters for your business.
Having different strategies for different social media platforms is also an excellent way to establish a brand online. The company can always test different social networks and after a while understand the metric which gives better results for the business. Note that some companies are active on different social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. On each channel, they can offer some of the same content, but always with a different slant aimed at appealing to the people who use that platform. So, studying the better way to approach your audience in the social media you are using is definitely important to learn. To finalize, the application of 4Cs on social media generates more engagement between brands and consumers:
- Create relevant content with topics related to your area of expertise;
- Receive the collaboration of your audience through criticism, comments, praise, testimonials and shares;
- Build your community or join the community of other companies to strengthen your brand;
- Spread the collective, idea in communities through relevant content.
Do you want to learn more about social media content? Post your comment in the post, and tell us about what subjects you want to see here!
Wrote by Ana Carla Soane
