User experience (UX) is a concept used in web design. However, its principles and teachings are also valuable to manage social networks because ideas and concepts such as value, utility, usability, accessibility and credibility are fully applicable to any platform, in which you have to satisfy your users.
Regarding a marketing strategy, you need to apply certain tactics regarding UX basic principles to succeed on social networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Twitter. That's why it's so important to offer a great experience in your social network for your users. They get your information and you get their feedback immediately.
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First steps to optimize your social networks with UX
The high competition that exists online means that companies invest more and more resources to stand out within their sector, attract more visitors and create a website with a more attractive esthetic. However, there are some factors that we overlook but are of vital importance.
1. Define your reasons for being on social networks
Users don’t enter social networks to expose themselves to advertising nor your brand, or to generate traffic to your site. They use social networks to relax and be in contact with their friends. Therefore, to empathize with your users and be relevant to them, you need to offer great value and interesting content adapted to your target niche and demographics.
Establish your Buyer Persona, where is it? For example, if your target audience is not on Facebook, what is the point of trying to reach them through this channel? You will lose your time and valuable resources that you could invest in another medium.
If you know the details of your consumers, you will develop assertive and well-oriented communication, since you will know exactly what to say, how and when. This is essential for creating content that pleases your audience, helps them solve their problems and allows you to establish a more intimate relationship with them.
Knowing your buyer persona will enable you to generate more leads, conversions and, consequently, more sales.
How does each publication contribute to the client's business model? Is it a meme or a gif? Is it the best way to execute the essence of the brand? Answer these kinds of questions to determine the content you will offer to your audience.
2. Define what content you’ll publish
The personality of your brand should show your values, and its esthetics need to be consistent with your value proposition. Your brand is alive and it has the capacity to evolve and adapt to the needs of the moment, so you must monitor and change the content you upload regularly.
It’s important to observe the levels of reach and interaction of your content, but also you have to analyze why your audience likes or hates your publications. Maybe it is because of the tone, the day you publish it or even the images. The point here is to never stop recognizing that everything is improvable.
3. Every post counts
Facebook assigns a score to each publication depending on the relationship it has with users and its volume of interaction and each post counts toward your page's total score. When you post, and that post receives no interaction, you’re affecting the performance of subsequent posts.
In fact, social networks are about uploading content that people like and get more interaction with. But you can optimize your posts to get more views, for instance, posts with images have an interaction rate of 87%, compared to 4% or less for other types of posts. So make every post valuable for interaction as they will deliver the message of your brand.
4. Customize your message using segmentation
If you use social media to boost your business, the best thing you can do is design content or campaigns targeted at a specific segment to match your message with your audience. Personalizing the message of your content increases your conversion rate and your information becomes more relevant to your potential customers.
Keep in mind that you’re not discarding customers, the objective of segmentation is to classify customers by different characteristics. This will make it easier to find customers. Remember that the goal is to obtain the greatest possible customer attraction.
By identifying customers, you know why they chose you, how they behave, how they consume your products or services, etc. Following this, you can separate your customers taking into account: age, income. gender, profession, nationality, ZIP codes, loyalty level, etc.
5. Hire a community manager for a better customer experience
We all use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or Twitter, but that doesn't mean we are all community managers. A community manager needs time and dedication to share all your brand information on social networks. It’s better to have someone exclusively dedicated to posting on social networks than abandoning your profiles for some time, decreasing engagement. Besides, a community manager will represent your brand and the voice of your business.
In short, social networks are a huge asset for improving your UX. They allow you to create a bond of proximity with your customers and keep them engaged.
UX design principles and best practices for Social Networks
The value of social networks for targeting audiences is unmatched (even by Google) and segmenting your audience is a key factor in marketing strategy. Social networks help you determine your audience, and then you’ll have many tools to organize and show your products and services in the format of albums or stories; facilitating access to information for users.
Users love a good UX design to quickly and easily find the information they are looking for and have multimedia material to accelerate their learning. Your job is to optimize your social networks as much as possible to offer the best experience... and we will show you some tips to make it possible.
1. Add useful content for all users
One of the most important UX principles in social networks is uploading good content. The companies that stand out are those that generate relevant content for their audience through interesting and valuable publications, with legible texts, quality images and consistency.
Actually, content with relevant images gets more views not only because they are more attractive, but also because they make messages easier to understand. On platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, you can use featured stories to spread content or even use videos for delivering more information and enhancing your brand identity.
2. Show consistency across all platforms
Your communications on the different social platforms must have a similar style to facilitate your brand recognition everywhere. In other words, your brand should show the same personality in all digital channels. This means choosing a specific font and colors in all social networks to avoid confusion in your users and they can identify your brand at a glance.
3. Be responsive to messages and comments from your customers
Today, users prefer instant communication channels for contacting a business. Being responsive to your users when they get in touch will generate more trust in your business because your users will know you’re approachable and ready to help.
You can even use chatbots and allow them to help multiple users simultaneously. They have the ability to provide immediate and professional responses to multiple visitors at the same time, so the satisfaction level will increase.
What's the point of all this? Establish and maintain the bond of trust between the brand and the consumer because 71% of users are likely to recommend a brand after a positive experience.
4. Share engaging content on your social networks
Having followers is not an end in itself, and by continuously posting promotional offers on your social networks, you’ll end up losing followers and the experience with your brand will become commercial, not friendly.
People need to trust your brand on deeper levels to be loyal customers. Concentrate on adding value to their lives by promoting interesting content using multimedia files because our brain processes 90% of the visual information it receives.
When we say that attractive content increases user satisfaction, take into account that most users barely read 20-28% of words on the page. That's why you shouldnt limit yourself to texts and adding content such as videos, animations or memes improve the UX.
In addition, if you have a store, you can reward the loyalty of your customers and followers, either with a discount or a gift to let them know the important role they play in building your brand. Don’t forget that a satisfied customer is a returning customer.
5. Respond to negative comments
Eventually, you’ll have unhappy customers and they will let you know their discomfort, and everyone will see it. Don’t ignore these comments since they may affect your reputation.
In fact, not responding to these kinds of comments only aggravate the situation and it may produce a feeling of abandonment and non-consideration. Consequently, regardless of the nature of the comments, always remain professional and show that you took the problem into account and you’ll get back to them as soon as possible with a solution.
On the other hand, if you have positive comments, you should also pay attention to them by taking the time to respond with a personalized message. According to ReviewPush, 68% of users say that positive reviews increase their trust in businesses.
6. Collect data to improve your customer experience
Analyze your comments and messages to collect data, then improve your services to keep your brand competitive. This is a good way to monitor and get customers’ feedback on your products or services. Thanks to the messages and comments received, you’ll identify areas that need improvement, customers’ requests and new trends. By the way, depending on the questions that come up often, you can set up a FAQ.
Once you have all this information, make sure to follow up and measure how it is working for you. Analyze why someone left your page without buying. Compare your page with others in the same area and analyze what’s working for them to improve or change your strategy.
Your social networks will go from bantamweight to heavyweight!
If you don't have a unique personality, internet users won't remember your brand and they will confuse your brand with other similar businesses. Choose a series of attributes that go perfectly with your product and start working on your social media strategy.
Apply to your page everything that you think is working on others. And try again. This way you will gain great experience and you will know exactly what works and what doesn’t.
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