I have to admit that social media has the power to make or even break a brand. If I didn’t know a brand from social media posts, then it is possible that I would never know about it for the rest of my life. You could say I’m a social media addict. However, despite the fact that I’m a social media junkie who often posts stuff, I am more inclined to look for online shops on social media. I might use Shopee for online shopping, but I am most likely not going to make any purchase decision if I don’t see the shop’s online interaction on social media. Why? That’s because social media can answer almost everything about a brand. Just use a hashtag, and you can already find what people think about it. If you are a business owner, you should know that this doesn’t mean a bad thing; rather, see this as an opportunity to grow your business on social media. While negative comments are inevitable since there are ups and downs in business, you can certainly make use of customer feedbacks on social media to keep you on the right path. What did I mean by that and how? Keep reading this article to find out!

Be aware of customer messages on social media

Every social media platform is always equipped with instant messaging feature that lets user interact more privately. When you have a business, your customers or potential customers will try to contact you whether for simply saying thanks for your services, or complaining about them or maybe sending you inquiries about your products or services. The best platform for that kind of communication is of course, social media. Some of your customers might comment on one of your posts and tell you about their complaints. However, be mindful that some social media platforms may have different kinds of instant messaging feature types and you may not know if you’ve got a message from someone. Instagram, for example, has a feature in direct messages that puts messages from the people you don’t follow in a separate place from those you follow and it is called “Message Requests.” Sometimes you might not even know if you’ve got a message from them. This could be bad if you eventually ‘ignored’ your customers’ messages and they would think that you didn’t care about them. This kind of misunderstanding can be avoided if you keep checking the message requests and see if you’ve got another one coming. In case you don’t know where to find it, this captured screen might help you. But first, go to your Direct Message section and find the requests on the upper right.

Always, I mean, ALWAYS reply

I know that if you’ve got so many messages already (I mean, every business is growing and so is the number of the message), it would be difficult to catch up. However, please reply to them. Whether the message is only a simple ‘thank you’ or ‘you are great’, you still have to reply to them especially if they need your help. Also, if they have something to complain and need a replacement as soon as possible, you have to respond and act fast before this happened…

Listen to customer mentions

Actually, social media mentions don’t always have to be complaints or negative comments. There are many positive reviews posted on social media and you can get the mentions if you are lucky. However, there are also times when customers use mentions to remind you that you’ve got responsibility to finish a problem. If it has come to this, I’m sorry to say, you can’t make the bad comments disappear, but you can at least reduce the negative impacts and maybe prevent the same problem from happening again in the future. I have seen a lot of cases like this on Instagram. Usually, people finally mentioned a brand on Instagram story for everyone to see if their initial approach of solving problems didn’t go the right way or the brand didn’t respond to them immediately. A friend of mine is a social media influencer and she would usually complain through a direct message so that she can still respect and protect the shop’s reputation. However, when the shop ignored her messages for weeks, she decided to mention the shop’s name on her Instagram story and tell her hundred-thousand followers about what happened. Shortly after, the shop immediately responded to her complaints and voila- the case closed. That being said, since she already mentioned the shop’s social media account on her Instagram and the story was seen by some of her many followers, we can’t deny the fact that the shop might have a little bit of ‘brand-break’ and need a little bit of fixing later. For that reason, before they mention your name for an open complaint, make sure you respond fast.

You can hire someone who is experienced with handling stuff like social media complaints or responses for your business. Also, don’t just hire one person. If your prospects and customers are more than hundred thousands, you can hire three up to five social media specialists. Depending on the number of followers and customers that you have, you should adjust to the number of social media admins that will handle the job. That way, you will not miss even one message from your customers or potential customers.