Social Media Basics

Quick reference

• 00:04 Your company's social media account is a tool that helps you shape your
• 00:08 organization or brand the way you want it to be seen.
• 00:11 You want viewers and followers to be attracted and
• 00:14 engaged in a way that helps you to understand them better,
• 00:17 which in turn can help you to grow your business, that's the end game.
• 00:21 Social media posts that encourage participation and
• 00:24 feedback will expand your reach and expose you to a wider audience, but
• 00:28 engaging posts aren't just about your product.
• 00:31 They can be about related topics that your audience is interested in that'll get them
• 00:36 talking.
• 00:36 So do some research, then you can create a poll use pictures or
• 00:41 videos to get people to stop scrolling and to pay attention.
• 00:46 Sometimes, customers engage with you directly on a social media platform or
• 00:50 on your own company chat portal.
• 00:52 Maybe they have a specific question,
• 00:55 in which case you will need to let them know you'll respond in a private or
• 00:59 direct message, and you can move that conversation to instant messaging.
• 01:03 And here are some reminders when engaging with customers in this way.
• 01:08 Sentences should have good grammar and be spell checked,
• 01:12 not just because you want to make a good impression, but also because it's very
• 01:16 easy to have misunderstandings with poor grammar and poor spelling.
• 01:21 For example, sentences should be separated by periods and
• 01:25 should begin with upper case letters.
• 01:27 Even though that's not common in social communication on instant
• 01:31 messaging platforms, this is important if you're representing a business.
• 01:36 You also want to break up your message into two to three sentences at a time to
• 01:41 make them readable.
• 01:42 But at the same time, you should try to keep related sentences together in one
• 01:47 block to avoid the confusion of the customer typing something in between
• 01:51 which takes the conversation in a different direction.
• 01:55 You should tell them what you're doing if your response is going to be longer
• 01:59 than 30 seconds.
• 02:00 You could say something like, let me check that out, or
• 02:03 I'm just going through your account information, I'll be about two minutes.
• 02:08 The other thing to remember for
• 02:10 direct messages is that your messages should be listenable, meaning they should
• 02:15 sound like everyday speech if someone were to read them out loud.
• 02:18 Remember that single word responses are abrupt, and
• 02:22 they can even come off as rude.
• 02:24 So even if the short answer to a customer's question is yes,
• 02:29 a better response on a chat platform would be, sure, that's no problem.
• 02:34 You want to avoid most web abbreviations so, ok is acceptable,
• 02:39 but ur, lol, idk, these are not usually appropriate for
• 02:44 business communication with customers.
• 02:48 Smiley's and thumbs up are usually acceptable, but
• 02:51 the other emojis they're generally not used.
• 02:55 And here's something interesting,
• 02:57 a final period before you hit send at the end of each message is unnecessary and
• 03:03 is sometimes even considered passive-aggressive.
• 03:07 Now if a customer contacted you directly on your website's chat feature maybe for
• 03:12 customer service or support, the representatives should introduce
• 03:16 themselves with their name the same way they would in a telephone conversation.
• 03:22 This does two things, it's a reference point in the future, and
• 03:26 it also establishes a human connection.
• 03:29 Communication keeps evolving, and as it gets more sophisticated,
• 03:33 the demands are higher.
• 03:35 So people do want quick, knowledgeable answers to their questions, but
• 03:39 we've also learned over the past few decades that people don't like
• 03:43 communicating with robots, they still value the human experience.

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