If you’ve ever had an hourly job at the local mall or restaurant or a movie theater (welcome back), you have some semblance of customer service. You are customer-facing, you are pleasant, you have some manners, and you know (or have been trained) to diffuse stressful situations and offer alternate solutions.
This is a lost art.
I still own the cast member handbook from 1997 when I hired in to Disneyland as a ride operator at 19. That foundation of service and their four keys (safety, courtesy, show, and efficiency) still course through my body – 25+ years later. [Side note: Inclusion is the fifth and newest key.]
When you can dig into your online community the way you can with your in-person community, you’ve got it.
What was the purpose of you building your business? To create a customer. Building those connections.
It requires you to take the time and spend the energy to cultivate that community. You start to see repeat commenters (fans), and the conversations start to be fun because you’ve gotten to know them. When I managed the social communities for a cable network, it was like a game: identifying the superfans, figuring out their demo info, and replying back to their comments and questions. I’m talking about spending the the time to skim through 100 comments every few hours; it went up to 1,000 comments every ferw hours during their most popular programming season. What you get, though, is an army of devoted fans who will back you up if a crisis happens.
For the cable network, if a movie was incorrectly scheduled, we’d get a ton of complaints. We’d also get a great group of fans who would help their fellow fans troubleshoot. They’d help look up providers and see if their schedules were up-to-date, they’d suggest different ideas. It was fantastic to have unofficial community support.
This week, I’d love for you to spend 15-30 minutes in the morning and like like like, comment comment comment in your feed (accounts you follow). Look up a hashtag on Instagram and comment on 3 posts of accounts you don’t follow. If you have comments in your posts, go back and reply back. It can be as simple as “Thanks for replying!” Then I want you do to do in the afternoon for 15-30 minutes. That Candy Crush (or Pokemon Go) time? Use that time to engage. Ideally you’d spend a lot more time, but some of you are solopreneurs who cannot commit more time (yet).
Tell me what your results are next week. I’d love to know how you did in engaging your audience. 👍🏾
