Comments sections aren’t exactly known as great sources of positivity and useful information. But reading through comments and other communications from your customers can actually be incredibly helpful for your business.
Cassey Ho of the online fitness platform Blogilates understands the importance of spending time interacting with her fans and customers. In fact, she recently said in an interview with Entrepreneur that she spends at least two hours each day just responding to comments online. That includes everything from email to Instagram.
She said:
“I read through the comments, I retweet and I do everything on Instagram and I check in making sure that not only are they on track doing the calendars that I put out there because they are my students or my clients so I gotta watch out for them as a trainer. And then I just like to see what’s new in the community. What do they want? Is there something kind of forming itself that I need to catch onto? Because it’s all about serving that fanbase but then again guiding them in the right direction.”
In this social media age, responding to comments – every single comment, message, mention and reply – might seem like a big undertaking. And Ho’s workload proves that it certainly can be. But it’s also incredibly important to put in that work.
Her reasons for doing all of that daily work can translate to a lot of other businesses as well. Being available and interactive with your customers, especially on social media, is clearly important. If you ignore or don’t answer messages in a timely manner, customers are likely to get annoyed.
Even potential customers are likely to hear about it.
But the other part of Ho’s strategy makes a lot of sense as well. You can learn a lot about what your customers might want from your company by simply listening to them. Whether it’s social media, email, blog comments or any other type of communication, customers have so many different outlets to share with you their thoughts and opinions.
They might have a complaint about an aspect of your website that is confusing but easily fixable.
They could have ideas for new versions of one of your products.
Or they could simply gravitate toward one type of product or service area that you offer.
All of that is information that’s potentially useful for your company. So, while it might take a fair amount of time to responding to comments and reading through them all – not doing so could really be a disservice to your company.
Image: Blogilates
Aira Bongco
Oh you finally featured her. I love Cassey. I actually follow her and do all her videos. I think that she’s authentic and a breath of fresh air. Business-wise, I think that she is the best example of a combination of good branding and relating with the customer.
Annie Pilon
She definitely seems to have found a good balance that works for her business. I’m glad you enjoy her videos!
To people who think that professional bloggers have it easy, this is a great example of the work being put in to understand their audience and provide interaction and real value. Keep it up Cassey!
I agree with you, Robert! Keep up the good work Cassey! What an inspiring story and a great blog name, Blogilates! 🙂
Annie Pilon
Yes, there’s so much more that goes into it beyond just putting together posts or videos. She’s doing a great job. And yes, Martin, I agree about the name – love it!