On October 19, 2020, Facebook announced the update of their Messenger API to include support for Instagram Direct Messaging. Now, businesses will be able to manage their communications on Messenger AND on Instagram! It is a way to engage customers more, to increase their satisfaction and reactivity, to improve customer experience, and for businesses through Trollishly that only use Instagram to grow as well.
Engaging Your Customers More
Instagram has greatly developed its shopping aspect over the years, becoming a real business platform. Now, a lot of people connect on the platform with the intent to shop, or to discover new brands. The new feature introduced by Instagram includes an automation tool that allows businesses to send automatic responses to their customers whenever they cannot answer. This way, if a user has a question, they do not need to wait to get an answer, which encourages them to buy. That is why it will engage actual and potential customers at the same time.
Increasing Customer Satisfaction and Reactivity
In addition, the new feature will also increase customer satisfaction and reactivity since they will be able to get answers to their questions faster and easier than ever!
Reactivity
First, they will have an automated service to respond to their demands and concerns whenever needed, and customer support will be facilitated for everyone. Customers will be able to send a direct message to the brand; no need to call or send emails to anyone (it already removes a weight)!
Satisfaction
On the other hand, customers will be more satisfied simply because they always will have someone to listen to their issues; they will be able to connect with their favorite brand, and this will make them more engaged and likely to buy.
Connection between a brand and its customers is the last thing that should be neglected; without customers, there is no brand, and what better way to increase sales than increasing customer satisfaction? Besides, according to Forrester, “73% of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do when providing customer service.”
“73% of consumers say that valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do when providing customer service.” – Forrester
An Improved Customer Experience
Customer experience goes hand in hand with customer satisfaction, and that new Instagram feature can only encourage it! A good customer service usually leads to a good customer experience, and “consumers are willing to spend 17% more on a company that has outstanding customer service”, as mentioned by American Express.
“Consumers are willing to spend 17% more on a company that has outstanding customer service.” – American Express. In addition, businesses will be able to get an idea of their customers’ experience since brands that benefit from a CRM now can get a global view of their customer loyalty.
Facebook, the giant that keeps innovating never ceases to surprise us! The new feature just introduced is a great advantage for businesses growing on social media, especially on Instagram! They are also thinking about businesses that only use this platform to work, which will be a good help.
Even if the new Messenger API support is still in testing, it should not be long before it appears on our phones! But before dashing off to the drawing board, we need a Content Strategy or plan of attack. A disciplined, predetermined approach sets you up with the best chance for success. Like cooking or painting, remodeling or writing a novel, you have to know what you’re making and figure out how to make it before the “art” begins.
There are many approaches out there, and varied how-to lists to follow, even tools to assist you, and in most of it you can find plenty of value. But there’s a lot of ideas out there, some wonderful, some conflicting, some questionable, and some that are no longer relevant. In my experience creating content in national and global markets, I have worked with many people in product, content, marketing, advertising, customer operations, analytics, and technology people far smarter than I am in their chosen roles – and I have been inspired by the latest trends and thought leaders, influenced by the same social and cultural shifts as everyone else, and what I’ve learned is that even though times, markets, algorithms, and customer needs ebb and flow, there remains these 6 essential ingredients that should go into any perfectly baked content strategy:
1. Know your Audience
When I worked on the product team at SAGE Publications, we created personas for the various digital products that we sold. We catered to undergrads, graduate students, researchers, academics, and authors. Within each of those groups were more specific personas. We needed to identify as many of them as we could so that we fully understood the needs of our audience.
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Grad students want to be close to a Starbucks or click Postmates for their meals. They want cool-looking cars (but probably can’t afford one right now) and are actively dating. That persona is widely different from the Associate Professor who teaches Music Theory. The Associate Professor is writing for a science journal but wants to write a novel, is married with a daughter and a second child on the way, and needs to get a bigger apartment, but doesn’t have tenure yet. What the academic needs from us can be far different than what our Grad student is searching for. But there is a lot of overlap and overlap is where we can get the most mileage out of our content.
2. What’s Your Process?
At EVgo we discovered that a lot of our customer complaints came from customers who were having trouble charging their electric vehicle at a fast-charging station. Their problem is that they haven’t been fully educated in how electric charging works and, more practically, how to charge their vehicles. That is a problem for an EV driver, so we decided to solve their problem. We created a series of How-to videos. Lots of how-to videos. How to Fast Charge Your Nissan LEAF. How to Fast Charge Your Chevy Bolt. How to Fast Charge Your Tesla Model 3. How to EVgo at ChargePoint. How to Use the EVgo App. How-to articles are a great starting point in any content strategy because they give your audience meaningful evergreen knowledge for free.
While we valued “How do I charge my car?” as a high priority question, it wasn’t the only one. Customers of any industry will have many questions, complaints, concerns, or suggestions that should be addressed in one way or another. Looking at your customers comments, listening to their calls, tracking their posts, will not only be enlightening, but it will give you enough customer-generated fodder to keep you or your content team busy making smart, valuable, entertaining, and engaging content for them.
3. What Makes You Unique?
This is one of my favorites because it’s about how you present your work. How did you take it out of the box, make it original, and engaging, turn it into something that convinces customers to LIKE, SHARE, SIGN UP, or CONTACT US.
The best way to be unique is to be yourself. Don’t try to be the next marketing genius of the year. It’s ok if you let them influence you and carry the torch for a bit, but ultimately the only way you will stand out is to do an about-face, turn upside down, juggle three carving knives, or tell a horror story (after all, it’s almost Halloween!).
Look at all the competition around us. Graphic designers, videographers, bloggers, social media rock stars. There is so much excellent content out there. There is likely a lot of content that directly competes for attention with you. That content is probably excellent. Yours can be excellent, too. It just has to be different. It has to take a different slant, point of view. Maybe your point of view. Conan O’Brien tells a joke a lot differently than Steve Martin would.