Building brand loyalty and customer commitment through social media

The definition of social media is rather a vague thing. At its narrowest, it depicts one way in which marketers and publishers can effectively put their messages across to encourage strong customer connections and firm loyalty. At its broadest, it signifies a form of publishing and the exchange of ideas within a community.

Someone who successfully employs social media doesn’t merely create content. The person or the institution manages to create conversations. And these two-way conversations lead to close-knit communities.

Even bloggers who write a post, want their readers to take part in the debate by leaving some comments at the end of the post. Their participation can take the discussion in an entirely new direction and add a new perspective to the debate. This sums up the ‘social’ aspect of social media.

What it essentially means is that publishing is more about participation. Just create a group on a website such as Facebook and you won’t be required to produce all of the content – textual or visual. Other group members will upload their photographs and tell stories.

That’s indeed the real beauty and power of social media! While it may well or may not be the ultimate goal, the result of social media action can inevitably be strong connections between the users or readers who choose to participate. Once these connections are firmly established around your domain-specific business, the end result can be the sort of solid brand loyalty and customer commitment sales professionals have always been dreaming about since the advent of direct marketing.