Once you establish your online business, there are things you need to do to stay connected to your customers, your team, and your industry. Communication and connectivity within an online business can build customer loyalty, which will help make your online business grow even more. Although they might seem irrelevant, you should never disregard these aspects of your business.
This guide will tell you how to stay connected in your business with five practical tips. We will also answer some common questions regarding building and maintaining connections in your online business.
Tips for Staying Connected in Your Online Business
Once you have set up your online business and it’s becoming successful, your job isn’t over yet. There are steps you need to take to maintain customer loyalty, increase business performance, and promote growth.
If you are asking yourself who or what you need to stay connected to as an online business owner, three aspects play significant roles in business success – your customers, your employees, and your industry. Each stakeholder is essential in its own way and impacts your company on a different level.
Here are five practical tips that outline how to stay connected in your business.
1. Research Your Target Audience
You should cover this step in the initial stages of starting your online business. By researching your target audience, you will be prepared for your future clientele. Once you familiarize yourself with your customer’s habits and needs, it will be easier for you to direct your business towards them.
Even after you’ve launched your online business, always stay one step ahead by surveying your current customers and their online behavior. In doing so, you will notice any significant changes, find out what aspects of your online business your customers engage with the most, and what areas you need to improve.
2. Respond to Customer Feedback
This step tends to be overlooked, which is a classic rookie mistake. If you ignore customer feedback, it will make your online business look unresponsive and, even worse, it will create a negative reputation, which isn’t easy to shake off.
Customer feedback can take the form of emails, direct messages, post comments, notifications, requests, product reviews, and similar responses. Set aside time to go through these to find out what your customers have to say, to solve existing issues, and address potential questions.
It’s not only vital to respond to customer feedback but to do so quickly. Even if you respond to every single message you receive, it won’t matter if it takes you an unreasonable amount of time to finally get around to it.
3. Use Social Media to Your Advantage
Social media is a virtual extension of your online business. You can use any social media network to advertise your products, boost your SEO, and communicate with your clients. Furthermore, being active and responsive on social media platforms builds customer loyalty.
This is where your clients will leave comments, send you messages, share and like your posts, express their opinions, and so on. As we mentioned above, it’s essential to keep track of all of this feedback.
To go a step further, speak directly to your clients if you have the opportunity. Ask them what type of content they would like to see on your social media platforms, what they like about your business the most, what you can work on, and similar questions. Directly addressing your customers will make them feel included, which will boost their engagement.
4. Communication is Key
Your clients constitute a significant aspect of your online business. However, your team is just as important as your customers. Just as with customer feedback, what your team has to say also contributes to your business’s success, so make sure to listen.
Let’s not forget that thanks to today’s technological advances, connectivity has received a whole new meaning. You can organize online meetings, video chats, networking groups, and perform team building. Also, don’t forget to ask for feedback, and make sure your employees feel free to express their opinions and disagree with yours if need be.
The more you actively communicate with your team, the stronger your professional relationships become.
5. Maintain Your Brand
When it comes to staying connected to your industry, the key is to maintain your brand and image. You can do this by constantly keeping abreast of new trends and scouting for potential partnerships and cooperation. Staying on top of your field will make you stand out, and it will capture your customers’ attention. Besides keeping up with trends, you can also make the first move and try starting a new trend in your industry.
Another thing you can do is keep an eye on your competition and don’t be afraid to look at their business activity.
FAQ
Why is Being Connected Important?
Connectivity plays a significant role in how your online business performs in the long run. Just ask yourself how long your business can go with no customers. By making no attempt to stay connected, make no mistake – you will definitely lose customers.
While staying connected with your customers is imperative, it’s equally important to maintain a connection with your team. If your team isn’t functioning cohesively, that can impact your business negatively. By making your customers and your employees feel like they’re being heard, you will build strong, long-lasting relationships with them.
How Do You Make Customers Feel Special?
There are several ways you can make your customers feel special. Apart from some of the tips we listed in the previous section, here are a couple of more things you can do to make your customers heard and feel special.
- Send personalized messages
- Post content that’s directly related to their interests and needs
- Figure out which platforms they use the most
- Offer 24/7 customer support service
- Answer any questions your clients might have
- Make them see that you appreciate them
How Do You Build Connection With Customers?
Building long-lasting relationships with your customers takes time and effort.
Any negative response you might have to customer feedback will reflect on your online business, and as an online business owner, you need to be careful. Therefore, it’s essential to respond to customer feedback and respond with a positive attitude.
Also, make sure not to take too long to respond to their questions. The faster you respond to their feedback, the better for your manager-customer relationship.
How to Stay Connected to Your Team?
As an online business, you and your team might face some challenges in connectivity and building professional relationships, such as working remotely. But just because you work in different locations doesn’t mean that you can’t form long-lasting relationships with your employees.
The most essential factor in staying connected to your team is active communication, whether that’s responding to messages, listening to feedback, finding centrally-located meeting rooms to get together periodically, or making sure your employees are satisfied with their responsibilities. In addition, it’s vital to communicate when you have doubts and concerns.
There are various communication apps you can use to make sure your team stays connected: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom, and many more.
Recommendations for Business Coaching
If you think that you or your company culture has room for improvement and you need to work on your customer or employee relationships, consider working with a professional business coach. Here are some of our recommendations for business coaches that can take you and your company to the next level:
Blair Quane
Yes, Blair has been doing online business coaching for a while now. See here for a full rundown of how he can help you in your journey.
Tony Robbins
Tony Robbins is an author, motivational speaker, and business coach who teaches business owners how to improve their performance and connection with business and life. Tony has a huge range of coaching material including productivity, performance, health, careers, leadership and many more. This is hands-off business coaching but in this day and age, Tony's digital offering is world class, accessable and too good to ignore.
There is No ‘I’ in ‘Team’
Maintaining the success of your online business can be a challenge for many business owners. There are countless matters to worry about daily. However, if you set time aside to build professional relationships between your customers and your employees or freelancers, you will learn how to stay connected in your online business in no time. Make use of software and automation to help you achieve this.
