Personalization, or personalized communication, was one of the most talked about topics on digital marketing in 2015. The web, email, and mobile have each become highly personalized channels for communication. Social media is no exception.

As marketers, we understand the value of building good relationships in our hyper-connected times. We also know that broadcasting our marketing messages isn’t always the best way to connect with an audience, or keep their attention. Direct, one-on-one conversations go a long way towards building great relationships with prospects, customers, and peers.

Brands use social media to drive customer engagement. While a good marketing campaign helps in getting brand visibility and outreach, it lacks the touch that a personal interaction can get. Successful brands know how to do a mix of both.

A personal touch in your marketing just works. It works when thanking a happy buyer, it works when helping an unhappy customer, and it works when inviting an influencer to your product launch.

The folks at Twitter understand this well and the platform’s latest update around guiding a public conversation into a private one is fantastic. Here’s how it works. Our team at Zoho Social couldn’t wait to build this into the product. We have it now, across all our plans. Yes, including even the forever-free plan, because we believe that building relationships with your customers is priceless.

If you haven’t tried out Zoho Social yet, you may want to do that now. You should be up and running with your social media accounts in a single dashboard, within a few minutes. That’s not all. You can create content, publish it right away, or schedule it for later. You can monitor keywords and hashtags, look at stats and analytics, and create the reports that matter for your specific business. And with our free mobile app, you can stay on top of your social media marketing from just about anywhere.

Try out the new features and tell us what you think. Cheers to building better relationships.