Tips For Interacting with Customers on Instagram

Discover Ruby Naldrett's top tips for interacting with your customers on Instagram.

The FW19 #ASHgirls campaign produced by The Fashion Digital © Eleonora Carisi

One of the most important parts of building your brand on social media is successfully interacting and engaging with your customers. Forging a good relationship with your followers is vital to both community management and customer service.

Social media is a huge part of running a business, and in many cases, it can make or break a brand. Just look at Glossier, who went from a seemingly unknown Instagram brand of to one of the biggest players in the beauty industry, all thanks to their dynamic approach to social media.

Stay Active

Take an active approach to community management. Aim to respond to all comments and direct messages within a day, and if you can, assign a dedicated customer service team to deal with any product-based queries. It's important to keep your customers happy and informed.

Build a Community

An essential part of creating a loyal and active following on social media comes from getting your community involved. Creating a hashtag for your followers to use when they post content is a great place to start, examples include #HumansofRixo, #ASHGirls and #TopshopStyle.

Highlight, Highlight, Highlight

Create a Story highlight to collate the best images that your followers share. Make your customers feel like they are a part of the brand by liking and commenting on tagged images and sharing their posts to Stories - it's a simple way to drive engagement and keep your community happy. Glossier shares a weekly round-up of their favourite follower posts.

Reply to Everything

Last, but by no means least, always reply to complaints, stay calm and be as friendly as possible. Relocate tough conversation to DMs if you can, ensuring that you resolve their issue as quickly as possible. Deleting complaints or criticisms will only reflect badly on you as a brand, and could lead to the issue escalating further.

Words by Ruby Naldrett