Think about when you go to a store. What do you enjoy? What parts do you dread? What if you could take out the experiences you don’t like — would you shop more or less? For over 20 years, Amazon has bet on the fact that if you can remove the areas that cause friction with consumers, they will shop more in your store. Looking at the current state of the retail market, they are right.
Live streaming is an addiction. It provides glimpses into the lives of others that evoke feelings of sameness between strangers. Last’s year’s top viewed live video was the lady sitting in her car wearing a Chewbacca mask while she laughed. Her video alone had over 160 million views, and she didn’t do anything but share her joy over a child’s toy. Businesses, big and small, have used live videos to give companies a human voice. Nearly every major social media platform now has a way connect with your customers live, but which one is the best?
There are as many definitions for customer service as there are industries. The position has to be fluid enough to cover whatever needs to be done. However, defining expectations for employees helps them meet the business’ and customer’s expectations.
Balancing social media with all the daily tasks you have often feels impossible. If you tilt one way, you end up falling into the social media blackhole and losing hours of your day when you should have been focusing on work. If you lean the other way, it is easy to neglect a valuable tool for connecting with customers. Life would be so much easier if you knew where and when you should post, but that’s just a dream … or is it?
Text messaging, email, website, phone, mail, apps, chat, social media, advertisements, in the age of information communication shouldn’t be difficult. The many options for how we speak with one another haven’t made communication simpler. Instead, they have created a cloud of noise that is difficult to maneuver through. How can you ensure your message reaches your specific audience?
What do you think of when you think of podcasts? Coming into this, I wasn’t a fan. Really, that’s probably not a fair statement. I simply never thought about them. I didn’t understand what podcasts provided. In my mind, I equated them with a morning radio show — I’d rather listen to music. Podcasts, however, are so much more.
Connecting with nontraditional students can be a challenge. As they come and go, more disconnected from campus events than other students, your message can be lost. Many of these students have jobs, they might have kids and they are older. All of this contributes to making them feel disenfranchised on campus. Keeping this population of students in mind, here are a few ideas of how your store can engage with overlooked students.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” the loquacious Polonius famously spouted in Hamlet. This statement, originally fraught with irony, has been increasingly embraced by social media. Blog-like post length wasn’t uncommon on MySpace, Facebook favors shorter statuses but didn’t limit users, Twitter cut people off at 140 characters, and now pictures and videos often speak for themselves. Image dominance is evident not only in post engagement but also in the current race to win users’ smartphone cameras.
As the English poet John Donne famously posited, “No man is an island.” College campuses can often feel like their own, self-sustaining world. In a lot of ways, that’s what they are; jobs, housing, food and even medical services are often provided. However, no one exists in a bubble. Embracing the greater community beyond the campus walls can drive foot traffic, enhance the shopping experience and support the local economy.
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