As most of you will be aware my Twitter account had over 20,000 followers. Not only that, I was also following about 11,000 people. How much business was I getting out of it? Next to nothing. Times have changed and so are the behavioural practices of your audience. Five or six years ago when I only had a couple of thousand followers, there was a high level of interaction and engagement. For instance, if I asked a question, very quickly I'd solicit multiple responses. Now, I'd be lucky to even get one response the majority of the time.
So what's changed? With successful adoption of Twitter and other social platforms, people have strayed away from deep and meaningful relationships while going undiagnosed with some sort of attention deficit disorder. The winners right now, are not the brands that are becoming master attention seekers but are those who are taking the time to listen and gain meaningful insights. Using these insights, they have the ability to engage with their customers to develop new ideas into successful products and services.
My feeling is that we need to bring everything back to the relationship with the customer. The cost of retaining a loyal customer is significantly less than the cost of gaining a new customer. What are you doing to deepen the relationships with your loyal customers? Do you even know who your customers really are?