Anchor Analysis: How to Use Waves for Business

There will be some brands who join Anchor to simply use the platform as a broadcasting platform. However, that would be missing the whole point of Anchor.

Anchor is not your megaphone, it’s your telephone. It’s a beautiful platform to build conversations with your community. It’s about dialogue – not dictation.

Here are ways to initiate Anchor conversations around work you’re already doing:

1. Customer Support: Answer Customer Questions

As you build a community on Anchor (or as current customers find you there), you’ll probably start getting customer questions. It’s important that you respond quickly (as in any other social platform). You’ll need to train your customer service team to answer questions in a timely manner.

You can either answer the question in the reply (if personal data isn’t shared) or provide a phone number they can call to resolve the situation. It’s even better if you can identify the customer in your database and call her/him directly. No matter how you handle customer questions questions, make sure to show everyone you care by responding to everyone reaching out to you.

2. Q&A: Dialog with Company Leadership

One way to build your company reputation and increase transparency is to host dialogs with your Anchor community. You could promote a A.M.A. event on your social channels and point everyone to your anchor wave inviting questions. Let everyone know that you’ll be taking questions throughout a certain period of time — and then answers will begin after questions reviewed. Treat Anchor like an audio Reddit A.M.A. with the goal of providing insight and dialogue with the community.

3. Product Launches: Share New Product Details & Answer Questions

Anchor can be a killer way to talk about a new product your business is offering. What’s great about launching a product on Anchor is that you can actually have a dialogue with everyone about the product and answer questions in real-time.

4. Podcasting: Share Audio Clips from Your Community in Your Podcast

If you host a podcast, think about adding a new segment where you feature questions or comments from your Anchor community. Adding in other people’s waves into your show will add more diversity of thought — and encourage more participation in your future waves.

5. Blogging: Share Insightful Waves from your Community in Your Blog

Let your Anchor community know that you’re developing a blog post on a specific topic. Share with them what you’re writing about and invite feedback. Ask them what topics or trends you should be covering as well. Ask for their input and let them know you’ll credit them in the blog post if you use their advice. This is not only a form of crowdsourcing, but a great way to promote an upcoming blog post. You can also add interactivity to your blog by embedding specific waves into your blog to highlight members in your community.

6. Press Releases: Provide Audio Summaries of Your Latest News

If you have news items that your Anchor community would find interesting, share the news in audio form. It’s a good idea to not only share the news, but to also ask for feedback. Ask a question about what your community thinks about the news — or something related to the news. If you’re able to post the wave before the press release, you can then link to the wave in your press release to get more interaction in Anchor.

7. Testimonials: Gather Positive Feedback from Your Anchor Community

Part of your Anchor strategy should be to gauge how your community feels about your products and services. Invite honest replies about the work you do. Use the positive feedback as testimonials in your content marketing efforts. Use negative feedback to guide your teams on trouble areas that need to get fixed.

8. Focus Groups: Crowdsource Insight from Your Community

Anchor can serve as a perfect platform to host focus groups. Ask intriguing questions to find out from your community what they think about specific issues that matter to your business. Create a campaign around these focus group waves so that you’re promoting these specific waves on Twitter to invite more responses throughout the week.

9. Recruitment: Discuss Job Openings and Corporate Culture

Why not use Anchor to talk about new job openings and answer questions about ways to apply. This can be an opportunity to share the types of services and products your company provides as well. You can use waves to to talk about company culture and answer questions about those interested in applying.

10. Thought Leadership: Let Senior Leadership Share Insights

When leaders in your organization are preparing to speak at an event or developing a new article, why not share these same insights in audio form? The beauty of Anchor is that the recording can’t be overly produced or lengthy. Your thought leaders can simply record their thoughts (like a voice memo) for everyone to hear. The wave can then be embedded into the article when shared online along with an invitation to reply back in Anchor.

11. Event Marketing: Discuss Upcoming Events

You can create a conversation around an upcoming event you’re going to be attending or hosting. Talk about the city you’re going to and ask for advice on places to see. Let others know what you’ll be doing and what meet-ups are happening. If you’re company is hosting the event, you can share a URL in the wave caption on how people can sign-up.

How would you like to see businesses leverage Anchor? Let me know.
The anchor community shared some killer tips for businesses …