If you’re a business owner, you’re naturally concerned about your customers’ feelings toward your brand and its offerings. With around 42 percent of the world’s population using social media, platforms like Instagram and Facebook are a great way to collect feedback from customers. But, what’s the best way to go about this? Here are 10 ways to collect customer feedback on social platforms and use it to improve your business.
1. Send a survey to your followers
Sending a survey directly to your followers can be a good way to collect customer feedback, but there are other options, such as using SurveyMonkey or Google Forms, which can be just as effective.
Whatever your approach, ask customers about their experience with your business and its services, and encourage them to be completely honest. This will help you understand what they like best and least about the overall experience, as well as gain insights into their feelings regarding any other aspects of their time spent engaging with your organization. This can be especially important if your primary business is selling online, as you won’t often have the opportunity to gauge customer satisfaction in person.
When you send out surveys, make sure all information is collected in one place so that it’s just as easy for every participant to get their valuable answers back to you—an online delivery is ideal. Additionally, offer the participants incentives such as discounts on future purchases, to make them more willing to spend their time completing the survey.
2. Crowdsource new products through social media
Social media is perfect for getting people involved in the development process of a business, service or product. If they have an idea or suggestion, they’re more likely to share it with you and any others interested in what you’re doing, which provides you with invaluable feedback to utilize. Social media makes it easier than ever to gain these useful insights because it’s so accessible to all, and friends and strangers alike are willing to communicate transparently and meaningfully on many platforms – in many cases you will receive more accurate feedback than you might get in a face-to-face communication!
3. Create a hashtag to track mentions
Hashtags are the key to tracking conversations on social media. They’re also often used to organize people’s posts into lists, making it easy to see what topics are trending and who’s talking about them.
Use hashtags to collect customer feedback and track mentions of your brand across multiple channels to see whether there is demand for your product or service, or any negative patterns of feedback that need addressing.
4. Use your post caption to invite feedback
You can use the caption on your social media posts to invite feedback from people interested in your content. This is a great way to get people involved in the conversation and encourages them to share their thoughts with you freely.
In the caption of your post, invite feedback or other engagement, such as questions related to a specific topic you have covered in a recent post (or the post in question). For example: “Hey [name], I saw this post about X, and now I’m wondering if you could help me out.” If there are no replies straight away, don’t be disheartened! It can take a little while to get responses to this method, but it’s worth it when you do, so keep going. You can also experiment with different wording or topics and see what approaches get the best response. Ask customers to leave reviews on your Facebook or Google My Business pages, too.
Reviews are a great way to help your customers share their experiences, and positive reviews are magic for gaining new business. They’re also an important part of SEO and customer trust. You can do this in the Facebook app and G Suite (a free version of Gmail).
5. Track conversations using social media monitoring tools
Tracking social media conversations is critical to understanding what people are saying about your brand. Social media monitoring tools can help you track keywords, hashtags and more.
Here are some tips on media monitoring tools:
- Use a tool like Mention or Hootsuite to track conversations relevant to your business on Facebook and Twitter. This helps keep track of what’s happening online so you can monitor any changes in behavior over time.
- If you’re not sure where keywords are related directly back at home base (i.e., your website), try finding them using Google Alerts or Social Mention—both will provide notifications when certain terms appear anywhere online
6. Build a private community for your customers
Invite your customers to join a closed Facebook group or LinkedIn group, where they can share their experiences and ask questions.
The best part of this approach is that you are personally interacting with your customers; you could even offer them discounts and other perks if they buy from you again, making them feel even more special. Raving fans are excellent for brand awareness.
7. Utilize direct messages for positive and negative feedback
Direct messages are an ideal way to get feedback from customers. If a customer has a concern or issue, you can address it directly in a message and have them feel that their feedback is being heard. You can also use direct messages to thank customers for their business and ask for referrals.
Direct messages are also great for addressing negative feedback from your customers, helping you to retain their business and improve the way your company operates.
8. Use polls and quizzes for quick feedback
This idea is simple – you ask people to answer some questions, tally up the results and see how many people have answered each question correctly. It’s easy to gauge interest in a specific topic, like what social media channels you should use for customer service or how comfortable customers are with certain app features.
You can also use polls and quizzes as an ongoing research process. For example, if you’re working on improving the user experience of your app’s onboarding flow, create a survey where potential users answer questions about their onboarding experience.
9. Send out a survey with a freebie incentive
Once you have collected the customer feedback, it’s time to analyze it using a survey chart. The best way to do this is by sending out a survey so that customers can give you their feedback in a simple way that doesn’t tax their brains, so they’ll be more likely to participate; throw in a freebie incentive and you’ll have plenty of data to leverage in no time.
Surveys are a great tool for collecting important information about your products and services, helping you to improve customer satisfaction through timely updates and other improvements. You can also use surveys to collect brand awareness data by asking questions related to logos or other aspects of branding initiatives.
10. Comment on relevant blogs and posts in your niche
Blog comments are a great way to gain new content ideas and build relationships with other bloggers. When you comment on relevant blogs, you’re getting your voice out there, and the blogger will see that you’re interested in their work. This can encourage them to share more of what they’re doing with the rest of their readers, which means more potential customers for you!
FAQs
What platforms should a brand use to collect customer feedback?
Use the same platforms that your target audience uses most. For example, if you’re selling a product to moms and they’re on Facebook, then social media should be your main focus. If your customers are older women more likely to use Twitter, that’s where you should focus.
How much information should a brand request from consumers?
Be specific about what you want to know. For example, you can ask for an email address if you want customers to provide feedback in the future. If you’re trying to collect feedback on your products and services, request contact information for your website or social media accounts so that you can follow up with them later.
How can a brand incentivize consumers to provide feedback?
One of the simplest ways to incentivize consumers to provide feedback is by offering a discount, freebie or prize. You’ll also want to consider what kind of perks would motivate customers who have already purchased from your brand, such as special offers for loyal customers.
Final thoughts
Social media is excellent for reaching out to potential customers and attracting new ones. You can use social media platforms to reach out directly by asking questions or posting content related to your business, helping to build your brand and improve your customer service – it can also help you identify trends in your industry that could help you to stay ahead of the competition.
