You’d think in an era of social media, where we’re all so aware of what everyone else is doing, that it’d be simple to give your organisation a human face. So, do your members know who to contact with questions and concerns?

How do you feel when you dial an 800 number and have to talk to a robot for 20 minutes to get a partial answer to your question? When someone asks a question on your Facebook profile, will anyone respond?

So, in this age of automated sales, web-etiquette and tech, how do you maintain your organisation’s connection with members? Shoot for your biggest target: real people, not a social media statistic.

Mix Your Mixers

You already know better than to set your social media feeds on autopilot and walk away, but another great way to monitor consumer involvement with your organisation is to run contests and challenges. It encourages awareness of your organization on social media and addresses any potential disconnect.

Remember this sort of sharing is essentially a peer-to-peer endorsement. When you have one person saying, “Wow, I love your organisation,” the hope is their colleagues will see the same post and investigate further.

Do the same with occasional in-person mixers. Organise org-meet-community cookouts with raffles to encourage new clientele to come meet your team and, yes, blast them out over your social network too.

The About Page

Perhaps the simplest and most essential space on your website, the About page provides a space for your organisation to show its depth. You’re not just a membership organisation, you’re one with deep ties to the local community. The about section is where you show your clientele why they can trust you and what they will gain by doing business with you.

Gregory Poole CAT does an excellent job with this. Every kid who’s ever owned a Tonka truck knows the brand name CAT because it’s that large of an organisation. But Gregory Poole puts a face on the company by detailing where and how he started the company. Clients don’t learn about a faceless organization from this page, they learn about the hard work and 60+ years of business put in by one family.

Thank-You Follow-up Call

The thank-you note is nearly a lost form of art, but politeness never goes out of style. If a client makes a major purchase, write a thank-you note or pick up the phone and call them. A just-checking-in phone callprovides several opportunities. You can:

• Make a direct connection with your customer
• Provide a specific point of contact — the face for your organization — to your customer
• Express how much your customers matter
• Take a moment to make sure their new product meets expectation
• Remove conversational barriers

If the customer’s interaction with your organization wasn’t memorable before, they won’t forget to talk about it now that you’ve taken a moment to listen to their thoughts or concerns.

Don’t let your organisation oversimplify with technology to the point that you lose human interaction with your customers. Yes, automated social media allows us to market to our customers, but it should also increase our ability to interact with clients on a more personal level.

This article first appeared on Social Fish by Scott Huntington