7 Steps to Building Strong Online Business Relationship [Social]

Let’s face it, the World Wide Web has completely changed the way we business today. Almost every new business needs to have an online division or at least a strong online presence, only to attract more customers, to provide them real time support and of course, look cooler than their competitors.

There are some important key points that are pretty crucial to the success of you online ventures, that includes the all-boring Relationship and Trust thingy. An average customer today tends to rely more on the word-of-mouth (mouth-to-mouth marketing) from friends, family or colleagues instead of the old fashioned ‘Business Trust’ and this is exactly where the SOCIAL element of the marketing kicks in. So, it really gets very important for an online business to have a good grasp over the social media to have a better grasp at their targeted market.

In this post, I’m going to discuss a couple of important steps that’ll help you build a strong online business relationship with your new and coming customers.

 

1. Your Brand Needs a Face! Give it one

There is this one thing I really loved about Microsoft Xbox 360 promotion in India and that is they have a FACE I can talk to when dealing with my queries, feedbacks or issues regarding their product. It gives a very personal feel to the whole thing of promotion, sort of a real community feeling. The Kung Fu Pandit (aka KFP) is the guy rep from Microsoft for the online community promotion of Xbox 360 India. My point here is that customers feel more confident when dealing face-to-face (in online social sense) with professionals they can trust. Having a face for your brand only makes it better.

2. Manage Expectations

Here comes the big thing, you need to learn to manage what your targeted audience expects from your brand and you need to deliver it. You need to have a swift plan idea on your audiences expectations. It’s really important to have enough technical knowledge of the things that are being discussed with your audience. There could be nothing disastrous than not being able to get your customers queries sorted out and getting them pissed. For example: Airtel’s twitter avatar did an awesome job pissing their customers off #airtelsucks

3. Establish Friendship, Trust & deal with Local Businesses

You need to a little extra careful when portraying your ideas online. Since you are communication on a written platform, everything gets recorded and you do not want your prospect to have a wrong understanding of your products or services. Just try to be friendly and cautious. And like I said in the beginning of this post, never doubt the effectiveness of the mouth-to-mouth marketing. Try and establish a relationship with professionals that maintain a website and can allow you to work together to mutually help each other.

4. Get in Touch & Join Professional Groups 

It is very important to keep in constant contact with your prospects. Spend enough time reading and replying to their emails, tweets, instant messages, wall posts and comments. Try and promote discussion, because it always leads to the mouth-to-mouth advertisement if all goes positive. Also, try and get listed in various professional organizations or groups to add that little extra legitimacy to your business. This will definitely help boost your reputation as a professional.

5. Provide a Guarantee & Back it up

I understand this is the real hard part but it should be from a customers point of view. Ensure your potential customers that your business is committed highest standards in product/service deliver and customer support. Let them know that one standard that you use to measure your success: The Customer Satisfaction (or whatever you want) and do your best to make them believe that it’s true.

6. Ask Favors! And do it as a Friend

Remember the relationship and trust thingy we talked earlier? This is where it pays off! Ask your customers, followers or prospects for a favor and do it like you’re asking  a friend to do it for you. Strike it when you have gained their confidence and the trust meter is all green. CAUTION: Don’t even thing of doing it too quickly or too often because it can kill you brand immediately.

7. “WOW Factor” does the thing

Once you have something to deliver, do it with confidence. Add a little bit of originality and a personal touch to whatever you do online because it makes the thing easy to understand and quicker to get responded. Add some extra efforts and do it with the “WOW Factor”, only to gain more trust and a better brand.

 

So, here we are with the 7 most important steps to building a strong Online Business Relationship. Got a tip regarding Online Business Relationships? Do share it in your comments…