Communication with the audience on social networks as a way to encourage purchase

Experts believe that social media is not a one-way communication. By creating accounts on popular platforms, companies open up an audience, and also open up the opportunity for them to communicate and express their opinion on a particular issue. Specialists use similar communication strategies, only the situations of their application are different. Selling a product or service inevitably leads to job questions or complaints from disgruntled customers, which are almost always the case. Companies that blog often encounter both benevolent and understanding viewers and critics. Some companies start their activities with social networks, believing that by promoting their brand there they will be able to start selling faster. For this, companies begin to publish interesting texts, and then comments with questions and opinions appear on them. Expert No. 9 is sure that until the company began to regularly comment on it, we can assume that its presence in the social network did not take place, because there is no feedback and activity. However, comments are not only an indicator of good marketing. It is also a risk zone. It is observed that the pages of brands and companies are often visited by random visitors who can leave negative comments. In addition, they can offend someone in the comments. Experts observe this behaviour among young people who are chasing popularity and attention. In their opinion, negative comments are better read. Especially if they touch on some sensitive topic. Also, there are many who want to post spam and their own ads in the comments under the popular post. This behaviour is typical of the more mature generation.

There are always nuances and pitfalls in communicating with the audience. Here experts point out that it is very important to quickly identify the real problem so as not to harm the company's reputation. Some brands will indiscriminately remove all negative comments made to them.

But deleting any comment that appears questionable or negative is not enough. Thus, you can offend a person who came with a real complaint or justified negative to the company. Such a person will immediately tell on their own page and in groups where the desired target audience may be present that the company is removing comments and blocking users instead of entering into a dialogue and sorting out the complaint. The situation turns from a small problem into a big scandal out of control. But the problem is that it damages the reputation of the company or brand, which is difficult to restore in the future. In this regard, most experts emphasize the importance of dealing with such situations.

Negativity is the biggest problem for all companies and brands. For a company that has customers, it is believed that the top commentator is the disgruntled consumer. Experts note that there are always much more complaints than gratitude: a satisfied customer will often keep

silent, but a dissatisfied one will speak out more often. There will always be dissatisfied people, no matter how great the product and service are. Experts were divided regarding the solution of such situations. 6 experts are convinced that the most important thing is not to ignore such behavior. However, the other half thinks otherwise, the most senseless thing that can be done in relation to such negative comments is to try to argue, prove and justify. They are sure that such people are not interested in the details of the work, they will not hear the arguments, they will not delve into the reasons that are difficult for them. Thus, experts try to formulate rules for working with such commentators. They are comparable to any technical support: speed and courtesy. The main rule was said by one of the experts - this is to respond as quickly and as politely as possible, promise to investigate and compensate for the damage, offer to go into a private dialogue and explain the details of the situation there. After all, it is difficult to hide anything on the Internet. In addition, other subscribers can see the comment before the company, and the authors very often take a screenshot in order to confirm. Therefore, when communicating with an audience, especially a young one, experts advise to remain calm. After all, you need to understand that the person on the other side of the screen is also upset and angry, he is waiting for help and attention. One of the respondents said that during his tenure he was very often faced with non-professional problem solving. It consisted in the fact that instead of a solution, companies simply blocked the person and closed their page on the social network. Thus, by not providing a solution to the problem, but simply avoiding it. In this regard, the experts were asked to identify several solutions to the problems. They offered the following: a discount on your next purchase, free shipping, a consolation gift, or an exchange of a product for a new one.

“… In no case should you let communication within the supervised group take its course. We are always for active discussions! And we always respond to user comments. At the same time, we are not afraid of negative reviews, working with negative feedback is one of the key skills that a digital worker must possess. " (Respondent № 1)

On the Internet, most people feel more relaxed than offline, because it is easier to write a comment on Instagram or VKontakte than to call a hotline or fill out a feedback form through a website. Users often try to attract attention: they leave reviews, publicly criticize and praise, ask questions and turn to brand representatives with suggestions. Even if a subscriber's question is unoriginal and has been encountered dozens of times in the community, brands are still obliged to answer it. In addition, in responses like this, users, regardless of age group, value personalization. Brands and companies strive to address the user by name and be attentive to their words. In addition, the subscriber should feel that a real person, not a robot, is responding to him, so a thoughtful response is just as important.

Expert No. 6 notes that all questions asked publicly should be answered without translating the conversation into private messages, but on the condition, that this is not urgently needed.

Firstly, other people can find the necessary information in this correspondence and will not ask again; secondly, in this way the brand will show that it is ready for dialogue and does not hide anything, and will also show its activity and desire to help in solving the client's problem. In addition, keeping track of replicas addressed to the company and responding to them is no less

important than filling the page with content. To be effective, you need to work with comments quickly. The most popular answer is regarding the time it takes to answer. Most of the respondents said it should take no more than 3 hours. This will allow us to take a wait-and-see attitude and stir up consumer interest. Only 2 out of 9 respondents stated that it is necessary to answer within an hour while the consumer is still interested in the question.

“Most customers don't like to wait, they want to get a response immediately. For them, there is almost no difference between chatting with a friend and a community administrator.”

(Respondent № 3)

Moreover, the majority believes that if a discussion has started under some post, you should not respond to comments too often and quickly, especially if there are no questions about services or products among them. It is imperative to give participants a space to communicate but it shouldn't be ignored this either, because it is needed to indicate the position of the brand, but no more than 2 comments.

Community subscribers can be not only page readers, but also become its co-authors. As mentioned earlier, mostly users want to have fun and get their share of attention on social networks. To engage young people, you need to empower them to share photos, favourite music, movies or recipes so everyone gets what they want. Subscribers will receive lively and useful content, and businesses will receive popular posts with a lot of comments. In addition, young people love to be involved in surveys and to be part of any solution. This kind of feedback from social media allows experts to adjust business processes. Sometimes brands directly consult with subscribers about further work. One of the experts gave an example of what name to give the brand's iconic toy? Experts consider followers on VKontakte or Instagram not the most representative sample, however, their opinion is valuable, if only because they decided to follow the company's life on social networks. Subscribers are happy to join the game, from which they can get some benefit. When they need to make a purchase of something, they will certainly remember the company or brand in which they were directly involved. And, most likely, they will not look for anything, but will go to where they are located.

Companies go to great lengths to win over their customers and encourage them to buy. Expert

№ 4 says that the content consists not only of beautiful pictures, but also of other activities.

Competitions are now widespread. However, the main task facing specialists is the correct definition of goals. This can be either promoting a new product or increasing awareness.

Experts highlight the main methods of conducting contests and sweepstakes in communities and on account pages:

1. Quiz. Companies are converting content into this form of activity in order to present a new product to subscribers, tell about its capabilities and advantages. In addition, experts come up with questions to test subscribers for knowledge of the brand's products and to find out what needs to be paid more attention.

2. Rewarding active participants. In order to generate a positive reaction from subscribers and loyalty to the company. Experts suggest identifying the most active subscriber. For example, the one who makes the most reposts, writes comments and likes more often than others. Especially the young audience loves such activities and is more involved.

3. Photo contests. Photo posting is one of the favourite activities of many social media users today. It gained particular popularity on Instagram, which allows you to instantly upload photos and share them with friends. Subscribers tend to buy products so that the brand will also post their review and a beautiful photo on its page. Companies, in turn, increase activity in the group, increase awareness and, of course, increase audience loyalty.

4. Like, share, action. Thanks to this method, the company will be able not only to significantly increase user activity, but also get the effect of virality, says expert No. 5.

The bottom line is for users to put a post on their page with a competitive publication of the brand and attract new members themselves. In such a competition, people have a chance to win a prize.

Thus, experts highlight the importance of holding such events. This is a good way to form a target audience, increase its number and engagement of subscribers, and increase coverage. It is also a great start to selling products or services. Experts observe the regularity of such activities. However, the success of the competition depends on the social network and its activity, on the prize and its seasonality, on the mechanics and conditions of the drawing, on the budget and advertising platforms - all elements are important.

"Brands, companies, online stores regularly hold contests in social networks to draw attention to a new product, increase website traffic and the number of orders." (Respondent № 6) Website promotion in social networks today is a popular direction for communicating with the target audience. After all, social networks are currently used by a huge number of people around the world. Among all the methods of working on the social promotion of pages and accounts, the experts unanimously call the holding of competitions among the most effective.

7.4. Trends in social media marketing

Social networks flooded everything around: users plunged headlong into the world of Stories, masks, likes and comments. However, social media is fickle. New trends, ideas for content and presentation change from year to year. Thus, the experts identified the most popular trends in social networks, which not only attract the attention of the audience, but also encourage them to take action.

Influencer marketing isn't going anywhere, but it will mature. One of the main trends is influencer marketing, in which brands and companies are heavily invested, several experts say.

An important fact is that it is not only celebrities who can attract attention with a reach campaign, but not stimulate sales. People show more trust in micro influencers. Studying the engagement market, the expert noted that there are no famous actors, athletes or politicians at the top of the YouTube rankings. Reviewers and Challengers rule here. Young audiences are more experienced today. The quality of advertisements and products will be strictly controlled by her. Subscribers see simulated partnership, understand when they are being “sold” and get tired of intrusive and saturated advertising. In addition, before, bloggers had profiles that people trusted. This created an entire advertising market. Now, due to the large flow of budgets of large companies (you can simply buy a blogger's opinion), the audience's trust in bloggers is decreasing. Thus, if a brand is being advertised by a TV star or a popular blogger, it does not mean that advertising will shoot and sales will increase. Therefore, one of the trends will be to focus on unknown persons, with a real audience.

"... trust in microbloggers is much higher, because the audience treats them warmer and perceives them as their friends." (Respondent № 4)

What's more, one expert believes that social media is returning to its roots - from mass marketing to a personal and hidden, communication-focused approach. He notes the emergence of closed accounts, secret chats, communication in small groups. There will be less direct interaction with people and more private communication in Instagram direct messengers, as well as in VKontakte private messages. Experts call this trend Dark social, they send secret links through online chat or email, not through a social media platform. This trend is important because some people are embarrassed to express their opinions for everyone to see, it is easier for them to share messages privately rather than publicly. Experts note that from some people they receive exclusively private messages with questions of detailed information. Thus, expert

№ 5 sees this as a trend in order to reach as many audiences as possible and gain their trust.

Experts point out the growing popularity of stories. They are viewed by a much larger number of people than classic posts in the feed. The popularity is confirmed by the fact that today all major platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat use Stories on a daily basis. It is believed that stories are both created and consumed by users on the go and thoughtlessly. Because of their transience, companies and brands have plenty of room for experimentation. All this makes the story so popular, real and personalized. Stories can create content that simply cannot be done with other traditional social media publishing tools. In addition, today users quickly get tired of familiar scenarios, brands and companies simply need to be able to use different styles of content presentation. Realistic stories with minimal touch-up work best, and adding text to stories helps increase audience engagement.

Storytelling is becoming an equally important area of development. If the stories are interconnected and tell a story, they hold the attention more. This format keeps users' attention.

Especially experts note that texts are being read less and less. Thus, if the stories are not scattered, but they have some kind of logic, then they become more interesting, users watch

them like a series. They want to watch and understand what will happen at the end. In addition, some experts have adopted this format and inserted a new product into it. This increases the interest of the audience. An artificial hype is created, after which all consumers are impatient to try a new product. With the creation of high-quality and beautiful content, user engagement is growing, so this trend will continue for several more seasons.

Another trend is live streaming. This is a unique opportunity for companies to use this as a channel to promote products and services. Its high activity rates and uniqueness make live video a powerful tool for experts. Plus, live streaming builds trust and builds brand loyalty.

Even though there is a possibility of a technical failure during live broadcasts, people are sympathetic to this and “penetrate” the brand even more, forgiving them possible mistakes and overlaps. That's because it's live organic content. Companies provide experts who go live and answer the audience's trickiest questions.

The experts also highlighted the relevance of selfies on social networks. What started out as filming yourself has morphed into video format. These are not only blogs, but also shooting stories, direct videos. Such videos allow users to convey the moment “here and now” more organically than with ordinary photography. Companies understand that people watch their friends' videos on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube for hours every day. Thus, marketers include such videos in their marketing campaigns. In addition, branded masks are becoming more and more popular among users. Popular brands create their own filters: they offer to apply makeup, sunglasses or a tattoo on the face with a mention of the brand. Experts point out that this is like "an application of augmented reality for social networks." The main thing is to come up with an interesting effect that will be distributed by the subscribers themselves without the participation of the brand, and integrate it into the competitive mechanics. Experts predict a similar spread across all social networks.

“The mask is a method of engaging a brand's audience, rather than a standalone way to drive traffic. Masks get annoying quickly, but they work great for contests where users need to share branded content.” (Respondent № 7)

Online reviews are a new trend in influencer marketing. Most of all brands are focused on developing similar content on YouTube. Because referral marketing is usually more credible and more people trust other consumers than corporate advertising. According to experts, some companies have already abandoned TV ads and switched to reviews in which ordinary people, their subscribers, participated.

Regularly, social media developers introduce new functions, hence new opportunities for promotion and new trends. Of course, you shouldn't blindly follow all trends, experts advise.

Social media promotion strategy should be based on analytics. Therefore, for them, as

Social media promotion strategy should be based on analytics. Therefore, for them, as