Using Stella Connect's Social Features

Stella Connect includes inbuilt social features that enable you to: 

1. Build brand awareness
2. Drive sales
3. Increase the number of social followers that you have

This social functionality is split into two different categories: ‘Share’ and ‘Follow’. In this article, we’ll explain these two different categories and how you can get the most out of them.

Share

With Stella Connect’s Share functionality you can encourage your customers to share their positive service experiences across Twitter and Facebook. Over two-thirds of companies using Stella Connect offer customers the ability to share across both Twitter and Facebook, about a quarter offer Twitter sharing only and under one in ten offer Facebook sharing only. We would encourage you to offer both to give you the highest opportunity to drive shares. 

Once you’ve decided which social network(s) you want to enable, the next step is to suggest language for your customers to share over social channels. Customers can customize this language before they post it, but having a compelling suggested language helps to increase share rates and enables you to control messaging more closely. Suggested language typically falls into two areas:

1. Brand building: messaging that highlights the great service the customer received and includes the name of the front-line team member to humanize the experience. This type of messaging helps to reinforce your focus on service excellence and ensures your brand is front-of-mind with potential customers. We often see customers customizing these Tweets to add their own personality and make them their own. 
   
   
   
   
2. Driving sales: messaging that includes a discount code or a link to special offers. This is a great way to turn your customers into your newest sales team! Your marketing or affiliate team will likely have these links already built out, so it should be quick and easy to get going. If driving sales is your primary objective, then there are also other options within Stella Connect you might also want to explore. Learn more here. 
   
   

Follow

If your marketing / social team is focused on increasing your social followers, then you should select the Follow option. Remember that you can easily switch back to ‘Share’ at any time.  

Best Practices

• Consider your marketing objectives (customer acquisition, brand-building, customer loyalty, etc) when developing your social strategy. If you’re not sure, your marketing / social team will be able to help

• Test different social messages regularly to maximize your share rates. The Connect clients with the highest sharing rates have tried a number of different messages to see what works best

• Track results using Connect-specific tracking links / codes - your marketing team will be able to get these setup for you
• Consider incorporating #hashtags that tie into specific campaigns / promotions / taglines that your company is currently pushing; rotate these hashtags each season to add to the freshness of the message

• Encourage your social team to like / respond to as many posts as possible to amplify the impact