It’s a lot harder to build great social media for a brand than you might think. It’s a tightrope walk on a very slippery line, and there are constant gusts of wind that threaten to knock you off your feet. 

And let’s be honest, most people tasked with managing brands’ social media presence don’t exactly have money to waste. 

So, what can you do when you don’t have the budget for paid social ads , influencers , and other similar tactics?

Quite a lot, it turns out.

Offer social customer service

Smaller brands , whatsapp number list those with limited social media budgets, are fighting back with what weapons they have. While they can’t compete with their larger competitors in terms of budget, pricing, discounts, and shipping prices/times, there are areas where you can fight back. We’re talking about providing sub-standard customer service on Social Media .

Most people who have been interested in branded social media for more than five years will remember the fantastic 2016 exchange between Skyscanner and one of their users. 

That is, the user in question was informed that one of his stops will last 413,786 hours, or approximately 47 years. 

And where some social media customer support people would simply apologize for the problem they encountered with a standard model, wordpress chat plugins to explore Skyscanner’s Jen became a legend by suggesting a few things that would reduce users’ wait times.

Not only did this exchange go viral, afghanistan business directory but people were publicly saying how Jen’s response was directly responsible for them becoming users.

The best thing about this whole exchange, and  numerous other examples , is that it costs nothing (or very little in some cases) to brighten someone’s day and provide customer support on social media that will have people praising your brand . 

What can you do to improve your customer service with social media?

Of course, just hoping you’ll do well isn’t enough. Your social media customer service needs to be well-structured, monitored, measured, and tweaked, even if your goal is to do it in a very casual way. It needs to fit seamlessly into the Customer Journey . 

It would take an entire article to cover everything you want to do, but here are some of the basics you can’t overlook:

• Choose the right channels . Not all brand customers are predominantly on the same social platform. If your customers are predominantly on Facebook, you will put the brunt of your efforts there. 
• Establish messaging guidelines . Customer service on social media should be consistent and appropriate. That doesn’t mean you can’t joke or freestyle, but it’s best to have some guidelines about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
• Set up tracking . Not everyone who mentions your brand on social media will necessarily tag you. This is why it’s important to do it “manually” and make sure all mentions are covered (and, if applicable, responded to).
• Prioritize . Not all requests and mentions will be equally important. Some of them can wait; others can’t (like people who have problems with your product/service). 
• Measure . Measure frequency, sentiment, and any trends you notice. Use this data to figure out new ways to improve. 

Understand your audience

It’s so easy to get too spread out on social media, both when it comes to all the different platforms and when it comes to the content you share. 

It’s really Marketing 101:

• Knowing who you are target audience is
• Knowing where to find them
• Knowing how to serve it to them

Market research and segmentation is a science that takes years to master. However, there are some basics that every brand can do by researching their current customers and the people who interact with your brand on social media. 

Some of the things you’ll want to identify are your audience’s age range, geographic location, lifestyle, life stage (teens, students, parents, seniors, etc.), interests, challenges , etc. 

 essential  the thing here is to do research and not just assume things. 

Take  Bay Alarm Medical  as an example. They sell emergency alarms for the elderly. You would think they would have no place on Social Media at all, let alone Instagram .