Successful selling online still involves relationship building for many brands. Unfortunately, as small business marketers, we tend to focus on traditional advertising and marketing without much investment in building relationships on social media.
According to Harvard Business Review, an influential brand is associated with not only a customer’s direct experience with an offering but also their relationship with the business that produces it. Therefore, before the selling begins, we need to consider the impact of relationships on customer acquisition and retention.
Social media presents a terrific opportunity to build relationships online before a person or a business becomes a customer. Social media is a lower cost marketing channel, which is appealing. Yet, many businesses overlook the benefits of building relationships on social media. Businesses end up in “sales mode” and fail to understand the similarities and differences between social selling and advertising.
Your brand should embrace building relationships on social media because it contributes to the “know, like and trust” factor, which often boost sales and conversions. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are some mistakes to avoid:
1. Don’t ‘nickel and dime’ your audience.
➡️ Instead: provide free value that wows and delights!
When you provide value, you’re valued.
Solving a problem, teaching a skill, or entertaining your target audience all illustrate your value proposition. In the end, the value is your underlying product 
or service. It’s one of the reasons customers choose to buy from your brand versus your competition.
Even better is providing value to your tribe at no charge. Free value creates raving fans that can’t wait to share your business with the world. Wouldn’t it be great to have fans eager to buy from you or promote you by word of mouth?
Once you help someone, you prove that your brand is the real deal, which results in trust and relationship building.
2. Don’t participate in ‘share the love’ days.
➡️ Instead: share the love EVERY day! (and twice on Sundays.)
When connecting with others via social media, it is better to give than to receive. Dedicate ten minutes a day to “sharing the love” with your supporters, influencers, and those with whom you’d like to connect. Nowadays, the term for the mutual sharing of love is often referred to as “reciprocity.”
What does reciprocity do? It builds relationships and bonds. It opens the door to new connections. When you do an act of kindness, people notice your generosity—and that can be valuable to your brand’s perception. Sharing the love may also strengthen the “like” factor.
Examples of reciprocity include:
• Retweets
• Sharing posts and blogs
• Comments and likes
• Mentions
• Shoutouts
• Unsolicited testimonials
3. Don’t be shy and closed off in an attempt to be professional.
➡️ Instead: be personable and share some personal info to show off your brand!
To be in a relationship, a sense of familiarity must exist. Being friendly and sharing some (not all!) personal information allows us to get to know each other.
When we spend time together in person, we have the advantage of getting to know one another’s personality through verbal and physical expressions. 
When making a connection online, it takes more effort to express emotion, personality, and voice.
Hence, it’s helpful to share personal information with your fans to show off your personality and brand. Sharing can help differentiate your business from your competitors by making a memorable impression. Sharing a story or being lightly humorous, for example, makes you stand out and conveys your brand’s individual flavor.
When you share, you strengthen your online brand and give people the chance to know, like, and trust you.
4. Don’t be a know-it-all.
➡️ Instead: admit when you don’t know and reach out to experts!
People do not expect you to know everything. In fact, you come across as more relatable and human when you’re real and honest. Obviously, if you’re discussing a topic or a product in your niche during a live presentation, there is an expectation you will be somewhat of an authority. But, that doesn’t mean you have to be an expert.
When a situation arises in which you don’t have the answer, find someone who does. You can turn your lack of knowledge into a collaboration effort. Reach out to an expert on a topic you’re researching. Collaboration, especially with an influential person, boosts your credibility, which leads to trust. It’s a faster path for people to know, like and trust you.
When you do look to others for help, be sure to credit your sources. It’s okay not to know everything; it’s not okay to act like you do.
5. Don’t miss out relationship building by forgetting to market your blog.
➡️ Instead: have a strategy to promote your blog content!
It is not overly self-promotional to market your blog content. If you don’t market your content, you’re missing out on attracting fans, helping others learn, and converting leads.
In fact, according to SEO SiteCheckup, people are more likely to purchase from businesses that produce quality content; furthermore, unique content is a reason that people follow brands on social media platforms. Marketing your blog, therefore, makes sense both for you and your fans.
From a relationship building perspective, a blog makes a brand more visible. Quality blog content builds authority, familiarity and influence for you and your brand. Readers of your blog will come to trust and rely on you for advice and guidance. Through promoting your content and giving readers a platform to comment, your blog is a terrific way for fans to interact with you and vice versa.
6. Don’t be overly quiet and disappear for weeks.
➡️ Instead: be responsive and proactive.
Reach out to people, and when they reach out to you, respond. There are no one-way conversations in a relationship. Forming connections that lead to business growth require responsiveness and communication.
Don’t be concerned about over-thanking on social media. Rather, use someone’s show of support as an opportunity to reach out and start a conversation. For example, if someone retweets or shares a blog I’ve authored, I sometimes reply with a question related to the blog topic (and a thank you!).
Responsiveness often leads to reliability and trust.
We can monitor social media to find out who is talking about us and what they’re saying, which means we can engage in these conversations. Consider this as another way to be proactively responsive: solve a problem, answer a question, or weigh-in on a debated topic. But be careful: don’t come across as rude or intrusive.
Conclusion
Because much of business relies upon relationships, don’t underestimate your online interactions on social media. As Entrepreneur Magazine points out, loyal customers are your best salespeople.
The next time you think about ways to promote your brand, don’t forget to include building relationships on social media. You never know when the next interaction will result in a purchase or a life-long fan.
Well crafted and easy to understand post. I am reading a lot of Social media post now a days as this is something bigger than SEO and point number 6 give me new idea to start conversation with fellow bloggers who like,retweet or share my post thanks Meghan once a again for the useful tips.
That’s wonderful, Hammad, I’m elated that you found value in this post! Leveraging social media for business means forming relationships and connecting with people. I love Twitter because it’s so easy to have conversations and engage with others. You’re absolutely correct when you mention using likes, retweets, and shares a way to open dialogue and start to create bonds. Thanks for your comments–I love hearing from you.
Hey Meghan,
. I am so grateful for your blog! I just learned a lot more than I did yesterday! Thank you darling. I love to blog, write, share and meet new people. I just started my new online business but at the moment I am having tech issues. No Computor! Lol.
Wow. You are awesome. 🙂 Very quick, to the point in a sweet way. I’m all over the “free” part. lol Thanks for sharing! Love your visuals!
Thanks Liz, appreciate all of the compliments. Free is always good, right? 🙂
Welcome to the blogging world Meghan and you are so talented at it… GREAT content and visuals. Love it! I love the part about being sure to engage every day and share the luv every day. I try to be sure I am reciprocating every day. It is hard to keep up with everything, isn’t it!
It’s really about consistency and engagement and if you do that then there won’t be those days away.. keep it real. awesome blog!
Awwwww…thanks Kristen, I’m blushing. Your compliments put a big smile on my face, thank you! There is certainly a ton of stuff to manage while working in the business and on the business, right?! You’re on the mark when you say that it’s a combo of consistency and engagement. I’m working on being more consistent, especially when it comes to blogging. 😉 While I’m decent at sharing the love, I need to get better at doing it every day as part of a routine. You’re great at it!
Being on vacation now in Arizona, my intention was to spend way less time online, and yet I realized without the consistent interaction (especially when people are kind enough to like and comment on my photos), the entire relationship building process breaks down. I am all about conversations and do make it a priority to reply to each person who comments on my posts. And of course reciprocation is essential so have a small group of people who we each interact with all the time. Value. Absolutely. The only way to create relationships, is to offer value and show interest in others. Thanks for the tips! They all make perfect sense to me.
It’s so true Beverley: you can see a direct correlation between engagement and interaction. For me, this is especially true on Twitter. The less I interact with users and post, the lower my engagement and new followers. Having a consistent group of supporters who reciprocate is definitely beneficial too. You clearly value your fans; however, I hope you get to enjoy your vacation! I force myself to take at least a full day off of social media when I’m on vacation. 🙂
Agree with all your points, engagement, sharing of you and showing that people can trust you for who you are I have learned is such a big deal of your social media management. Just today a colleague posted about social media management, and how to plan it, but did not mention engagement, conversations and putting time into be personal on social media, saying it is only part of the branding and not of your management side. Theoretically that could be true, but if you do not set time aside in your plan for this most important part but focus more on impersonal posts, I do not believe any longer that you will come very far in your social media presence. So totally agree with you here. 🙂
Great points Katarina! Getting the most out of social media for your business requires both a management and engagement plan. You are absolutely on target when you say that you need to set aside time for engagement. Without engagement, social media becomes less effective as a marketing channel.
Great stuff, Meghan! The item about not being a know-it-all is especially interesting to me, because I’m trying to brand myself as an expert in my field. How do you balance that?
Thanks, Carol! From my perspective, your blog, website, and social media presence help present you as an expert to your audience without directly stating it–which is part of the balance. The other part of balance when establishing your expertise is collaborating with others. Collaboration with the right people in your niche humanizes you without diminishing your authority and can increase your influence. (Kim Garst is the perfect example of someone who collaborates very well!) But, I’ll point out that people buy from non-experts all the time. I think that it’s more effective to work on the ‘know, like and trust’ factor (aka relationships) than to work on being perceived as an expert. Just my two cents!
Sharing, conversations, replying it’s all so important. I recently asked my small group in my 30 Day program if they were going to continue with my next 30 Day program and the answer was yes. When I asked why, what did they find most valuable the answer was, the personal attention I gave them. Relationships are key in every aspect of business and I think that is easy to forget when you are behind a computer and not face to face.
Wow Lisa–that’s great news about your group! And it’s proof positive that relationship building can make a big difference in business. We definitely lose some of the benefits of face-to-face interaction when we do business online. Thankfully it’s still possible to nurture relationships online–and social media can be a big help with it.
Well written and easy to really get these tips. I do so try to engage often with others on none LUV days & find it disappointing that my posts are not seen by them. Many never respond to comments. What I have noticed is that people who are in the sm arena do pay more attention to one another than to small businesses who could be their next customer. I love social media and so glad creating an online business opened this avenue to me.
Thanks for the compliments Roz, you made my day! I definitely run across people who are not good at reciprocity–they simply don’t understand how it works or maybe they don’t care. Not responding to comments–especially blog comments–really annoys me. I never thought about social media people focusing on each other rather than potential clients, but I’m wondering if I’m guilty of that?! Great insight.
Loved all your tips! It’s so important to be engaging with your audience all the time. If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, outsource. If you can’t afford to outsource, don’t bother at all. One of the things that absolutely slays me are people who moderate comments on their business Facebook page. Really? If you’re aware and engaging, you will be able to remove offensive posts right away. It’s a big turn-off for me.
Great feedback Jackie–I think you have a blog post topic right there! 🙂 I admit that some weeks life happens, and it can be quite the challenge to engage as much as I’d like. What stymies me is seeing some brands not reply at all–either on FB or on their own blog posts. I’m a believer in outsourcing for sure!
I love your suggestion to share the “luv” everyday. You don’t need to belong to a social sharing group or wait until it’s a share your blog day. I keep a twitter list of bloggers I like to engage with and also add facebook pages to interest lists to make it easier to share on any day!
Thanks Crystal! For me, reciprocity has been key in building amazing relationships that have helped my business. I’ve made personal friendships in the process too! I love your suggestions to manage your own social sharing via Twitter lists and Facebook Page interest lists. I’ve been meaning to do the latter, so thanks for the reminder.
Thank you Smart Bird! This is what I’m trying to tell people with small businesses that are resisting using their social media because they aren’t used to having to do it. New habits like these will go far in keeping their business viable in the next few years. I personally think its fun, but I’m a writer and not everyone enjoys looking for or writing content!
I like this post.
Hi Jessica! I have fun building relationships on social media too! Like you, I have a background in business and professional writing, so I don’t mind getting to know others via text and visuals. But I do meet lots of business owners who don’t enjoy the online ‘meet and greet.’ You are so right when you mention that these habits will help businesses to stay relevant–and increase their customer acquisition. Thanks for your input and compliment!