Followers are the currency that social marketers promise to earn through any social media initiatives. The big question is how the accumulation of followers reflects on the business. How followers impact businesses in earning more dollars especially for small and medium-size business (SMB)?
When someone follows you on Twitter, you gain an opportunity to interact with that person over time. Not only has this but they also provided you access for private conversation through direct message (DM). As this is the golden opportunity for outreach and developing customer relationship. As followers learn more about your business and offerings through your tweets and messages they become more loyal. According to a survey done by Twitter, 73% of respondents say they feel more positive about an SMB after they follow that business and read its Tweets. They are more likely to take action on the shared information via Twitter than another mode of advertising.
Since followers are not acquired rather influenced therefore they tend to talk more about you and become your brand ambassador. This shows in their purchase behavior as well. If someone bought from your follower base they tend to purchase from you in future as well. Twitter reports in a survey done by its user that 60% of respondents say they’ve made a purchase from an SMB based on something they saw on Twitter and 86% say they plan to purchase in the future. Most importantly, 43% of respondents plan to make multiple purchases from SMBs they follow on Twitter.
Followers in Twitter are hard earned currency but unlike other social media platforms followers in Twitter stick with you. It’s common for followers of Twitter to stay followers, possibly because they develop an affinity toward your business. In my opinion, the brevity imposed by Twitter force the SMBs to be direct and to the point. This is appreciated by the users who don’t like to be bullied by verbose and on your face advertisement. Two-thirds (66%) of respondents have been following their favorite SMBs for at least six months and 56% have never unfollowed an SMB.
We suggest SMBs nurture their relationship with the customers through their company handle and reach out with personalized messages and offers. They need to understand social selling is not an add-on to sale channel. They need to be managed differently. This means creating great and targeted content for right kind of followers. Engage Influencer and convert them into your brand ambassador so that you can ride on their influence to make your message viral. Create “word-of-mouth” effect on the Internet for your products or services. Use social media, not just for sale or services but also to address the concerns and complaints of your customers.