You should be talking to Women!

Women hold the family online shopping purse strings, so no matter what your product, you should be talking to women.  Women are the ones using social media to build their relationships, and in this era of Relationship Commerce, those relationships are pure gold.

It’s the women who will take the time to ask for and give product recommendations.  It’s the women who will tap into their networks to find the good deals.  It’s the women who will gladly make sure all their friends hear about a wonderful new product they discovered… or a terrible product they would never buy again. 

However, these relationships are meaningless for you and your brand if you don’t have ways for these women to easily talk with you.  They want to know they can trust you, and how do they figure that out?  They build a relationship with you, the “influencer” (seller) just like they do with their friends and other trusted information sources.   You absolutely must make sure that women find it easy to talk to you and about you!

1. Make sure social media tools and your own online communities are as easily accessible as your online product information.  This shows that you are not afraid to have your customers / clients talk with each other, so you must not have anything to hide. 
2. Interact publicly with individuals of your audience.  You know that the most successful relationships are two-way streets, so keep that in mind as you interact with your “audience.”  Social media allows you to build very visible relationships (2000 Twitter followers? 2000 possible observers of any of your interactions) so every single interaction counts.   An information push won’t get you anywhere – you have to ask questions and answer them!   Then ask follow-up questions and answer those also.  Follow me on twitter (@TedRubin) to see what I mean.
3. Communicate consistently.  Don’t expect to build trust if you are only responsive to your audience every now and then.  Build social media response time into every day and your consistency will pay off.  Only pay attention once in a while, and you have no chance to build a relationship.  In other words, just like you can’t disappear in non-digital life and expect to keep your relationships in tact, you can’t just disappear online. 

So take another look at your product and your brand offering.  Are you talking with the women?  You should be.  You need to be.  If you’re not, start making changes TODAY – your brand success depends on it.