“DM us ASAP!” is a kind of phrase that you must have heard every now and then, whether it be among friends, families, or colleagues. It's quite the popular term in the digital sphere and stands for “Direct Message.” As you might have already guessed, DM is a private communication feature available within social media platforms for social media users, enabling them to interact one-on-one or in smaller, closed groups without the messages being visible publicly on feeds or timelines.
But to know more about the best practices of capitalizing this feature, keep reading this blog to get the best insight for you to get started!
Direct Message (DM) For Different Social Platforms
Now, DM is a secluded space for conversations that only you and the recipient can participate in, the type of which varies from platform to platform. For instance, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all have their own direct messaging platforms, and the terms and conditions for each vary. Let's see how!
For instance, on Facebook, the DM functionality is embedded within the Messenger app and is available to register approved news pages apart from individual users. Besides this, users must “like” a page before sending a DM. But you can only send up to 150 at a time and forward messages to 5 people or groups at a time.
Instagram And Twitter
Instagram's DM feature allows users to send photos, stories, videos, and messages privately, and a trusted Instagram account can send 50 to 100 Instagram DMs per day, while newer ones can send 20 to 50 Instagram DMs in 24 hours. In Twitter, however, DMs are allowed to send 500 messages per day after a “follow.”
TikTok
TikTok also embraces DMs, facilitating content sharing, collaboration, and conversation away from the public eye within the platform. Direct messaging on TikTok is available to registered account holders aged 16 and older.
LinkedIn's InMail serves as its direct messaging tool, allowing professionals to network and discuss opportunities privately, even though they are not connected. There is no set limit to the number of messages you can send per day on LinkedIn, but limiting outreach to 100 messages per week for free accounts and 150 per week for paid accounts is advisable.
What Is The Importance And Benefits Of Direct Messaging On Social Media?
Direct messages help take a conversation or interaction from offer one-to-many to one-to-one. While we all know about the general benefits the options offer, like connecting with friends and families, there are other benefits as well that make it an important feature for any social platform. For businesses to enhance their interactions with customers, foster engagement, and aid in various aspects of their operations, DM acts as a key feature and holds significant importance for several reasons:
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Personalized Interaction: DMs allow for one-on-one or small group conversations, enabling more personalized interactions compared to public posts or comments. Brands or individuals can connect with their customers personally, fostering stronger connections and deeper relationships between users.
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Confidentiality and Privacy: DMs offer a secluded space where users can communicate confidentially. It provides a level of privacy, encouraging users to discuss sensitive topics or share private information securely.
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Enhanced Customer Service: For businesses, DMs are a valuable tool for providing customer support as they can be used as a direct channel for delivering personalized assistance outside of their owned platforms. Users can seek assistance, resolve issues, or provide feedback without broadcasting concerns publicly.
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Effective Communication and Collaboration: Private messaging enables communication for collaborations, partnerships, or project discussions. Users can discover friends, collaborators, and partners through DMs to coordinate and work together away from the noise of public feeds.
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Networking and Professional Development: In professional settings like LinkedIn, DMs play a crucial role in networking, job searches, and business-related discussions. Recruiters and candidates can connect, share insights, and explore opportunities in a more personal manner.
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Marketing and Sales Opportunities: Direct messaging offers businesses a chance to engage and initiate private conversations or initiate personalized marketing and sales efforts. It allows for targeted outreach, lead generation, and nurturing relationships with potential customers, showcasing their offerings, exclusive promotions, and discounts in a more intimate setting.
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Market Research and Insights: DMs are a good way of gathering valuable insights and feedback for market research purposes. Businesses can initiate private conversations with potential buyers or old buyers to understand their preferences, pain points, and opinions and act on them for refining products or services.
When To Use Direct Messages?
Leveraging the benefits already mentioned above, there can be a plethora of good and practical instances when you can use the feature of DMs for a business. Marketers and businesses talk a lot about online reputation management being crucial to building and maintaining business success; well, DMs have a particularly very important role to play in that.
Let's talk about 4 possible situations where businesses can use DMs:
Situation 1: Suppose you have encountered a negative review from your customer that is getting a lot of public backlash. In such a situation, you can leverage this smart inbox tool to address your customer's complaint and respond to a negative review like the image below. As you reply publicly and ask your customer to share their issue in more detail in DMs, you significantly reduce the damage done to your brand reputation.
Situation 2: For instance, if you want to strengthen your brand's customer service and reach out to the maximum number of customers, you can offer DMs as a live chat option so that customers can use the same to report problems with their orders. This is most effective as 79% of customers prefer live chat options for customer service, and the immediacy of being able to talk to someone, even through a chatbot, improves customer experience.
Situation 3: For instance, you want to connect with an influencer or brand ambassador to promote your products and services and want to discuss with them the details of the collaboration, DM is a very secure and useful option to initiate a starting conversation and then take it to a more professional platform like emails.
Situation 4: For recruiters or businesses looking to engage with potential candidates, DMs offer a more personalized approach for initiating conversations about job opportunities or recruitment processes and can also be used for follow-up for a more personal touch.
Situation 5: Businesses can also use DMs to inform their followers or customers about essential information they need to make informed purchase decisions, which can be related to new product releases, promotional offers, discounts, and other exclusive content to help entice users and drive sales.
8 Best Practices For Using Direct Messages
With customer expectations growing by the day, it's important to use direct messaging with care and leverage the best benefits it offers to provide customers with the most memorable and convenient service. However, direct messages can damage a brand’s reputation if done poorly. Hence, it's important to be aware of the best practices that will help you maximize the benefit of this feature. Let's see what those are!
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Avoid Being Too Promotional
While it's tempting to promote products or services, avoid overly promotional content in DMs as it doesn't really fair well with customers and can be poorly received by them. Instead, focus on building relationships, providing value, and addressing specific needs or inquiries or you can send a DM sparingly to a selected group of users who qualify for a special promotion.
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Respond With Zero Delay
Aim for prompt responses to DMs, as Direct Messaging is all about real-time communication. In fact, 93% of customers expect a brand to reply to them within 24 hours. Thus, even if they are auto-generated, customers will expect quick replies that demonstrate attentiveness and dedication, contributing to a positive user experience. But remember not to make the cardinal sin of not responding at all.
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Personalize Your Messages
Tailor messages to recipients by using their names, addressing their issues with care, and referencing their previous interactions or interests. Personalization adds a human touch, shows that it's not automated, and makes conversations more meaningful. This approach can help create a more authentic connection and increase the likelihood of a positive response.
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Prepare Stock Responses
Create templates or stock responses for commonly asked questions or inquiries. This streamlines responses while ensuring consistency in messaging and that you have a database of responses and answers that you can pull up most quickly to optimize your response time. In this way, you will be able to help more of your customers, resulting in a bigger social following. However, personalize these templates whenever possible.
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Use Chatbot Assistance
Employ customer service chatbots to assist in managing social media DMs to provide fast answers to the most basic queries, and you can shift your attention to the clients who need personalized assistance. They can handle initial queries, provide basic information, or direct users to relevant resources, improving response times and efficiency. However, ensure their flow makes sense; hence, it is advisable to review any automation by your team before launching them. But if successfully implemented, chatbots can really be a great way to automate customer service by providing 24/7 support.
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Maintain Professionalism
Even in private conversations, maintain a professional tone and demeanor, particularly when communicating with potential clients, collaborators, or business partners. In the strategy of engaging, don't make your tone very casual, as some of your clients might want some professionalism. So it's always best to be respectful and courteous even if discussions become heated via direct message to reflect positively on your brand or persona, evading a brand crisis.
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Respect Privacy And Confidentiality
Always prioritize user privacy and confidentiality, as DMs provide a private space of communication that can raise privacy concerns. Hence, avoid sharing sensitive information without the explicit consent of the involved party unless necessary and respect the boundaries of your audience, ensuring compliance with data protection regulations.
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Manage Messages Efficiently
With so many DMs flooding in, it becomes tedious to manage so many customer queries and keep track of them, with the risk of missing out on an important one. Hence, to manage your DMs efficiently, it's wise to get hold of a social media management tool that can automate the work you do. Statusbrew’s Smart Inbox makes it easier to handle your messages and respond to them quickly, organizing, filtering, and managing incoming DMs, labeling or categorizing them. This will help you streamline communication and ensure no message goes unattended.
Manage Your DM’s Effortlessly!
You can simply utilize platform-specific tools, such as message filters, labels, or automated responses, to streamline and manage incoming DMs effectively to simplify communication and enhance responsiveness.
However, for businesses that like to act fast, Statusbrew's social media management solutions might be the best suited for exceptional control, value & assistance. Our industry-leading social media management suite not only helps businesses automate, engage, and analyze their social efforts but also manages different conversation types, including DMs, organic comments, ad comments, mentions, tweets, recommendations, reviews, and more.
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