6 steps for startups to keep customers engaged

While many startup companies in Singapore spend budgets and resources on the acquisition of new customers, many forget how important it is to keep them sticky to their brand once they acquire one.

Singaporeans emerge as the global leaders for the longest time spent on Facebook, with an average of 38 minutes and 46 seconds spent per session (Experian, Sept 2011). This means social is the logical step to compliment your company’s traditional digital touch points. Here are six steps on how startups can get started.

1. Know What You Want

Don’t underestimate the importance of focus. As with any business plan, know what you want. Decide how you would want to leverage social touch points for. Marketing, Customer Support, PR etc, pick one and start with that. Marketing would usually be the best start for a startup. The aim here is to find a focus and starting point.

2. Develop the Engagement Strategy

Map out the segmentation audience, online behavior (to find tone, time of engagement, consumption behavior and media types), content strategy, platform/s (don’t forget applications and mobility), workflows, basic guidelines (Do’s & Don’ts) and measurement. The aim here is to ensure long term goals, social operations and workflow which can scale. Keep it simple.

3. Build your community

A great way to start building is a small digital advertising spend to promote. Harness existing communities already in play on and offline. Don’t spam.

Build real life relationships and get involved in communities and authentic discussions without selling. Couple this with social SEO, targeted sponsored stories, Google ad words and integration with traditional marketing, PR and links to your CRM (if you have one). The aim here is to drive organic growth through authentic relationships and leverage social to CRM.

4. Engage and harness your community

Brands are publishers. Create authentic content. Focus on passion points. Demonstrate the core values of the company through your stories. It could be 30 second clips of ideas that you like to share, crowd-sourcing for views and dipstick insights; to recognizing and rewarding advocates and contributors. The aim here is to humanize your brand, share the passion, listen and respond in a timely manner.

5. Leverage Actionable Insights, Measurement and Reporting

Data is easy if you know what you need. Depending on your objectives, leverage free analytic tools. Track fundamental social data and the customer journey through links to your website and touch points.

Spend some time to understand what this means and how you can drive actionable insights to your business. When the poll says we like ‘this’ compared to ‘that’, you now have a dipstick gauge to start with; from a community that has a level of vested interest in you. The aim here is to provide high level understanding through the wealth of digital data you can harness without getting overwhelmed. Focus on what you need and can action upon. Again, keep it simple.

6. Empower employees

Managing social communities takes time. Spreading the load makes it easier and also more fun. Find a champion but have employees understand the guidelines and empower them to engage.

Being a startup, it should be easy and simple. However, be cautious to ensure you have the right people on board. In general, if the community is self moderated, you have a great digital engagement eco-system going. The aim here is to involve and empower to achieve a truly social employee eco-system.

This does not aim to be an in-depth plan but what I hope this does is start a thought, provide a high level frame work for startups to embark on a structured approach to drive an ongoing engagement cycle based on authentic content, great relationships and driving business value to customers. 

Gerald Ang  is the Head of Digital (APAC) for a Global Wireless & Telecommunications Company. Find out more about Gerald on https://about.me/gerald.ang