Relationship Building in the Digital Age

For many of us, we’ve seen the ebb and flow and overall growth that has happened to our favorite social networks. What was once incredibly social is now restricted by algorithms. This leaves many business owners asking themselves, “How do I build a community–and the all-important relationships within that community–in the digital age?”

Luckily, there are tools and strategies you can use to get past those algorithms and build those important relationships so your business and brand can continue to flourish despite what’s happening behind the scenes in social media.

What does it mean to be social on social media + build relationships?

With the stress of social media on many business owners' minds, the question about “where does social media fit into my customer acquisition strategy” or “should we even try to build relationships,” may be ever present. The short answer is yes, you definitely should try.

Let’s be honest, for many businesses, gone are the days of old when your customers came into your brick-and-mortar place of business where it’s much easier to build relationships because you’re interacting with each other in person. So how do you build a community with people you’ll never see or probably even talk to? Although you’ll have to do things differently to build that community with your customers, it is absolutely possible. Turn your social media into a place where everybody knows your name (and vice versa).

Social media is where you can not only build those relationships but also build the trust that is crucial to any relationship, especially with business relationships + purchase behaviors.

In fact, building this basic foundation of trust is crucial to business success for two reasons:

• Trust builds those all-important customer bonds, which will turn customers into repeat customers and brand evangelists.
• Trust helps you leverage your brand offerings in a variety of ways that aren't possible with distrust (think upsell).

Here’s the deal: If there’s no trust between you and your customers, you likely won’t have many customers because no one will want to spend their hard-earned money with a business they don’t trust. And without trust, none of the other methods you might use for building relationships in the digital age will matter. Trust is key. Trust that it’s just that simple.

Once you’re working to establish trust (or if trust is already a part of your business), here are 4 ways to build relationships in the digital age.

Give them something to talk about: Embrace word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is nothing new, and according to Nielsen, 92% of people trust recommendations from people in their community over advertising. But don’t pack your marketing tools away just yet. Create a campaign that encourages people to talk. And before we dig too deep, let’s breakdown traditional vs. modern WOM (word-of-mouth)

• Traditional WOM: Prior to social media and the internet, most of our favorite product recommendations were shared by word-of-mouth marketing within our personal communities (neighbors, families, and friends). Everything happened offline.
• Modern/Digital WOM: Digital WOM happens in ways you may not expect. Consider that a “share” is “word-of-mouth” in the online form. And while you might think that sharing among close friends is optimal for getting the word out about your business and products, it goes so much further than that (more on that below).

When it comes to WOM, we’re the experts. Why? 80% of our business comes from WOM recommendations from our clients and people in our network. Giving people something to talk about is literally our business!

It’s important for business owners to remember that social media is a powerful tool, but people also have lives offline. Follow the advice of Reba McEntire and “give them something to talk about.” Marry the traditional with the modern. Here are a couple of great examples:

• Use buzz marketing: If you’re launching a new product, product variant, or have an item coming back into stock, create a waiting list that allows your customers to share once they’ve joined. If you want to up the ante, incentivize the share with a giveaway or limited promotion.
• Ask, answer, + tag: Use thought-provoking questions or on-trend concepts to prompt your users to answer and tag a friend in your social media.
• Become a resource: We talk a lot about content marketing (it is king of SEO, afterall), but making your social media or website content a resource guide that presents your brand as the authority or hub in a community is a great way to share–and keep sharing–evergreen, educational content.

If you’re wondering about all those “friends” on social media, the truth is that sharing among “weak ties”—acquaintances, colleagues, social media influencer followers, and so on—has shown to be more effective for “word-of-mouth” marketing directly from the horse's mouth (your direct ties). That’s a big advantage when it comes to social media. Remember, weak ties are more apt to bind different groups together, expanding your marketing efforts and overall reach. And it builds trust, too, as an additional bonus.

Share user-generated content (UGC)

Content is king. No content, no business. So-so content, so-so business. If your content isn’t going to keep your customers engaged long enough to build a relationship that leads to trust, further engagement, and sales, you’re in deep trouble. In 2021, ad spending across all media platforms saw an increase of 18.6% over the previous year, with digital media capturing 64.2% of ad dollar allocation totally about $183.1 billion. It should be no surprise then that the average person encounters between 6k - 10k ads everyday.

Long story short: we are over saturated with content, and having boring or average content just won’t cut it when it comes to gaining the attention of your customer base. So how can you overcome this short customer attention span when building your brand-customer relationship? Add user-generated content (UGC)—anything your customers share (text, videos, images, reviews, etc.)—to your marketing toolbox and share UGC as much as possible across your brand. [UGC can increase][4] time spent on a page by 90%, engagement by 50%, email views by 73%, and conversions by 10%. Those are powerful stats that can build your business relationship simply through using UGC. And when it comes to UGC, reviews (aka the word-of-mouth content we spoke about above) can be the way to go. Here’s why: [4]: https://www.tintup.com/blog/3-reasons-ugc-delivers-better-roi/ 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions, but only 33% of businesses are actively seeking out and collecting reviews.

Don’t be one of the 33%. Make the time to encourage customers to leave reviews for your business and your products. And don’t forget to share that UGC (after all, it’s free!).

Engage in social listening

Listening is so important, and not just offline. Social listening involves closely monitoring social media platforms for anything related to your brand (mentions, tags, conversations, comments, and so on) and then analyzing this information to uncover opportunities for your brand to use this information to build and scale your business and to pivot successfully when necessary. The key to utilizing social listening is not only in the data collected, but also in focusing on the emotion behind the data, which is crucial for not only building those trust-bound relationships but for long-term success as well.

Don’t take it from us: Nearly two-thirds of marketers agree that social listening has increased in value over the past several months. So be sure and include this relationship-building tool in your marketing plan and start listening! Bonus: the more listening you do, the more UGC you will likely also gain.

Personalize your content

Your customers are bombarded 24/7/365 by a constant wave of information, and that wave is only going to get bigger and bigger. Instead of just riding the wave with everyone else, it’s important to stand out.

Do you ever feel like all of the messaging from brands starts to feel very generic and very impersonal? You know what we’re talking about…the endless stream of social media ads: different person, some messaging. No. Thank. You.

To set your brand and marketing apart, humanity and personality are the name of a successful marketing game in 2022 and beyond. One of the best ways to include humanity in your marketing efforts is through storytelling.

Why storytelling as part of your brand messaging + relationship building?

• You want customers to remember your message, and stories can be 22% more memorable than facts and even more memorable than statistics and testimonials. Sharing your brand message through storytelling can be the difference between customers remembering you and your brand or not. Stories and the emotions they evoke are memorable. Facts and statistics are not. Plain and simple.
• Since no two stories will ever be the same, the stories you share cannot be duplicated by any other business, including your fiercest competitors, giving you an edge in attracting your ideal customer avatar.
• Stories build trust through the emotions and shared intimacy they evoke. When you share a story, you’re involving your customers in a memorable experience that can deepen that brand-customer relationship and that all-important foundation of trust.
• Stories build a community through the emotional connections that are created and shared through those stories.

The bottom line: Stories elevate your business above that 24/7/365 barrage of “noisy” ads hitting your customers. Ads can be annoying. Stories can be endearing, causing customers to want to further engage in the message you’re delivering. If you’re unsure of how to start your brand story, start with your why.

Building a relationship with your customers in the digital age can require you to think outside of the usual relationship-building box, but with digitally-focused word-of-mouth marketing, sharing UGC (especially reviews), social listening, and personalized content like storytelling, building relationships, even relationships founded on trust that can overcome the never-ending noise of today’s marketplace, is possible. And it’s definitely possible for you and your brand.

Need help with your strategy and brand development? Or maybe you need to customize a plan that works for what stage in your planning you are at, we offer services and solutions to get you where you want to go.