Our lives are made easier by common business practices that include automation, but at what cost? At the end of the day, customers still prefer human interaction. A recent article highlights what companies are doing wrong to engage customers and how they can do it better.

The first step to loyalty is communication. It’s important to get personal with your followers and try to get the audience involved as much as possible. More than half of people in the world use some sort of social media. This greatly increases your chances of interacting with potential customers and existing ones. It’s critical to be everywhere so that your targeted demographic has the convenience of finding your businesses and staying updated.

Interaction can’t be an occasional thing. You should regularly include a call to action at the end of your content. If you are networking appropriately, you can reach a large percentage of this audience on several sites, meaning you can get the most feedback.

If you’re just starting out, Facebook and Twitter are your obvious choices to connect with consumers. Take a step in the other direction to reach colleagues with LinkedIn and Google+. If your business content can benefit from images try establishing yourself on Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr. Once you’ve gotten the hang of how to use images to promote your products and services, add in video, if it’s appropriate, and market yourself on YouTube.

No matter which medium you choose, remember to portray your personality. Use a friendly tone that doesn’t include fancy industry lingo which could cause you to come across as pretentious. If a consumer makes a comment or inquires about a particular service, respond quickly. When you engage customers with feedback it is one of the most important attributes of this entire process.

Transparency is key to creating brand awareness and consumer loyalty. If people are talking about you they are promoting you. Insisting conversation between yourself and your readers, and your readers and each other, is a great way to collect valuable feedback. Engage customers by encouraging them to respond to a blog post and begin discussion about a particular topic. This gives a level of inclusion we all crave.

But you can kill two birds with one stone with feedback. Not only are you developing a rapport with potential customers but gathering much needed data for later evaluation. It helps you get it right and work out any problems with products, services, or kinks within the industry.

Some examples of common feedback is to get customers to send in pictures of themselves with a product, maybe even using it, if possible. You can publish this to your social media sites. Coupons, or free products are another great way to get to engage customers.

Let us help you engage customers using social media. Susan J. Campbell Copywriting Solutions can even help collect and analyze the customer feedback you receive. We understand how important it is to understand user behavior and click-through data. Contact us to help identify opportunities and problem areas so that your business can capitalize on them.