The Advantage of Social Engagement for Business, in Simple Words

sasha uritsky

Aug 22, 2014

Much is being said about social networks and their importance for businesses. The amount of analysis, explanations, and advice keeps on growing, while the matter is being investigated from every possible angle, real and imaginary.

As for me, the need for businesses to market and sell on social can be explained by a simple argument.

Here it is.

The principle advantage of social networks for a business over other mediums is in the social networks’ potential to build trust. Traditional marketing mediums, such as TV, newspapers, internet, radio, etc. are not designed to build trust. They are information channels, or scaling vehicles, or sales means, but their primary goal is not to build trust. Social networks, on the other hand, are exactly this - a trust building tools.

And herein lies their biggest advantage in today’s market. The endless variety of options consumers have and the ever growing dissatisfaction with traditional aggressive marketing methods, such as commercials or banners, means that creating trust between businesses and their audiences is now the most efficient way to attract customers. The way that guarantees long-term sustainability and growth.

This is, simply put, the reason for businesses to embrace the social.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

NMODES at Collision 2019

While Toronto is charged with hosting the Collision - "North America's fastest-growing tech conference" this year, nmodes is excited to make its first appearance among designated start-ups who have been selected to demo their products to conference visitors, potential investors, tech-enthusiasts and business executives.

nmodes, a year and a half in the market, offers a conversational product that uses AI to provide its customers with a scalable solution to execute 24/7/365 marketing acquisition and customer experience programs. While nmodes has already garnered its global presence with 40+ clients, North American market continues to be most enterprising for AI Chatbots and Voicebots. Collision Tech Event offers an exciting opportunity for nmodes team to take its networking game a notch higher and pitch it to businesses looking to catch-up with the AI space and be early adopters of hottest AI products available in the market.

How nmodes is different than other chatbots?

AI space is nothing new to the tech world as chatbots, virtual assistants and voice bots are finding their commercial contribution toward improving the customer experience of brands. nmodes continues to work closely with the businesses focusing on helping brands drive double digit growth in lead conversions and engagement rates.

Three key market differentiators for nmodes:

1. Interlacing marketing and customer experience

nmodes chatbots are custom built for the brands. nmodes solutions support full customer lifecycle from lead generation to marketing campaigns to scheduling demos, to gathering feedback and understanding engagement patterns of existing customers.

2. Lifetime AI training

nmodes solutions promise to work with progressive AI capabilities that are built to recognize old and new communication patterns and form a sensible response template that is malleable and fulfills the intent of desired conversation for the customers.

Nmodes solutions work on three principles while conversing with the customers.

A) Keep business context

nmodes solutions remember the customer’s history and their presence in the sales cycle and hence conversations are based upon the context of customer for the brand.

B) Data personalization

personalization of conversations focuses on collecting different data points from all internal and external data sources, helping brands deliver tailored and one-on-one predictive interactions.

C) Easy to use analytics

nmodes advanced dashboards uncover detailed analytics and insights on customer conversion rates, engagement rates and listen upon most common conversations to help brands better align their marketing communications and customer experience strategies.

Social selling. Difference between Facebook and Twitter

There are obviously some key differences between Facebook and Twitter that make them appealing to different people as well as businesses. If possible, businesses should try to leverage both networks in their marketing and sales efforts.

But marketing approaches for each network differ. Consequently social selling approaches differ as well. Here are some major differences of the two networks that impact sales strategy:

- Twitter lets all the accounts commingle, Facebook makes a definite distinction between business and personal. This can be an issue because a business page cannot proactively connect with individuals with personal profiles. Individuals have to first like a business page and still the business can’t reach out to them directly unless they message first. This is not the case with Twitter, as anyone can follow pretty much anyone.

- Facebook preferred way to market products and promote online sales can be compared to a showroom. The prospects can see the product and purchase it through some other channel, however engagement (with prospects) is limited to friends and followers. Hence growing the number of friends and followers becomes a critical task on Facebook. Twitter does not offer promotional capabilities but engagement activity is not limited to followers. The engagement on Twitter is therefore more straightforward and can lead to direct sales.

- Facebook user data is typically open to friends or followers. Twitter data is typically open to the entire world.

- Twitter is fast (minutes). Facebook is slower (hours and days).

- Twitter is more about building a brand identity. Facebook is more about business relationships.

To summarize, a direct timely engagement could be a good strategy on Twitter. In a typical scenario a user tweets that she needs a taxi or asks where to dine tonight. A taxi company or a relevant restaurant engages in a conversation and secures a customer. It is an efficient approach with immediate ROI.

On Facebook a good strategy is to grow and educate a community of followers. Facebook is excellent for promotional campaigns. This is a longer-term strategy with effects not visible until after several months.