5 Proven Strategies to Boost Social Media ROI with Live Chat

Some of the main reasons businesses use social media are to engage with their target audience — answer their questions, get them to review your business, and of course, share helpful content with them and to generate more customers.

In fact, data by Ambassador shows that 71 percent of consumers are more likely to recommend a brand to others if they have a positive experience with it on social media.

How effective is your social media strategy? Are you optimizing your time and budget for social media?

To optimize and achieve high social media ROI, you can start using a tool like a social media live chat. Live chat, which usually lives on your site, can be the easiest way for your customers to contact you. But, most of your customers spend most of their time on social media.

So, if you use live chat along with social media, you’re more likely to speak to what your customers want.

So let’s take a closer look at the steps you can take to boost your social media ROI and grow your business with social live chat.

1. Get to know the best social media platform for you

Choosing the right social media platform to use for marketing is crucial to the success of your social media marketing campaign.

If you want to see significant results, you should take your time to choose the social media that’s right for your business, because this will be important in how you use social live chat, too.

The first thing you should do is to determine your buyer personas or customer profiles. It will help you to know exactly the social media platform your target customers will likely be in.

For example, data from Statista show that 60 percent of Snapchat users in the U.S. are under the age of 24. If through a market research you discover that your target users are under 24, then Pinterest and Snapchat is the ideal social media platform to use.

That doesn’t mean you’re not going to use other social media platforms. Some of your ideal customers will still be on other platforms.

But you should give more attention to the platform that has more of your audience and spends less time on other social networks.

2. Set your social media ROI goal

Defining your social media ROI goal is also one of the most important first steps you don’t want to miss. If you don’t set your goal, you won’t be able to determine whether your efforts are a success.

Do you want to create awareness, generate new customers or revenue? Whatever you think will be a measurable benefits from all your social media activities can be regarded as your social media ROI goal.

To make sure your goal is set up properly, use the SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound):

• Specific: Don’t say I want to get likes on Facebook. Instead say, I want to achieve X number of likes from Y category of people. For example, I’d say I want to get 1,000 likes from B2B business owners.
• Measurable: You should be able to measure the success of your goal. If your goal is to generate engagement, what could the result look like? Comments, reactions, shares? 
• Achievable and Realistic: If you know your resources can’t allow you to get 100 million likes in 1 month, don’t make that your goal. It'll be extremely demotivating for your team.
• Time. Finally set a timeframe within which to achieve your goal. Set milestones and track progress..

The good thing about setting your goal is that it’ll allow you to concentrate on engaging with people who matter to your business. It’ll also help you stay organized and make maximum use of your time.

3. Initiate a chat at the right time

Let's say you want to support your customers on Facebook. Using a live chat will promote smooth communication.

Some people complain of not seeing results from their live chats. Well, I think it’s because of the wrong approach to live chats. There are case studies of businesses having success with live chats.

For example, The Sun received 80 percent increase in sales inquiries addressed through the chat channel since launch.

It’s important that you initiate the chat at the right time. But when is the right time?

Allow your customers to get value from the content that led them to your website first. After a while, when they have read up to 60% of your content, you can now initiate a chat in an attempt to answer any question they may have.

Neil Patel used this strategy and saw a dramatic increase in inquiries that lead to new business. You too could also benefit from using live chats on your website.

4. Timing is of the essence

Did you say you offer 24/7 customer service? Oh, just 8 hours, right?

Well, that time is great but have you considered your international clients? Your timezone might not be the same if you don’t run a local business. So, you’ve got to know the time zone of your audience and adjust your customer service timing to suit them.

You could outsource it if it goes beyond the scope of your employees’ working hours. Whatever, you do, don’t be the kind of brand that won’t answer their live chat messages for 24 hours. It’d have been better you didn’t have a live chat instead.

Live chats are designed to provide quick responses to customers query. But if you’re not there when your customer needs you, how do you intend to achieve your goal. And it’ll kill your business gradually. It’s important you always be active in your live chat during your specified working hours.

The time you also post on social media is also very important.

According to over 20 studies, here’s an infographic that shows the best times to post on Facebook.

According to QuickSprout, the best time to post on Facebook is by 1:00 pm to get the most shares and 3:00 pm to get the most clicks.

And the best time to tweet:

For Twitter, the time is 12 - 3 pm, and for LinkedIn, it’s in the evening by 8:00 pm.

5. Use the right call to action and at the right time

This is extremely important. However, most brands do it the wrong way.  Facebook can be a great lead generation engine if used properly.

You could slide in some of your products links that are related or are useful to the conversation.

Don’t be overly advertorial — and only point to information that can benefit your audience.

And on social media, sharing your content on social media doesn’t have to be boring, it’s great to add some tips from your content before sharing. Then don’t forget to add your call to action. Tell your audience to check out your content. You use a tool like Rebrandly URL shortener for the call to actions you share on social media. This way you are able to track the clicks you get and you'll be able to see how your CTA's perform.

Here’s an example by Kevan Lee of Buffer. He didn’t just post a link. He said something and nudged his audience to check it out.

In order to succeed with your social media strategy, consider adding a live chat to your Facebook page and your website and putting more effort in engaging with your customers, supporting them, and helping them can help boost your social media ROI significantly.

Sam Suthar

CMO, Acquire.io

Sam Suthar is Acquire's Head of India office, where he manages day-to-day business operations.