So you have done some reading and research about attracting customers online and keep seeing the word “engagement” thrown around. You know what the word means but how do you do it online with social media?
Engagement is a key social media metric you need to understand, implement and measure. Regardless of which platform you choose to increase leads or brand awareness you need to understand what topics your customers are interested in. One thing is clear: guessing at what your customers want on social media is a sure way to waste your marketing dollars.
START WITH A SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT PLAN
First, you need to start with a social media plan for responding to your followers and the plan should be specific to YOUR business.
If your plan is to educate people, then your engagement strategy should focus on sharing resources, answering questions or giving advice.
If your focus is to show customers how your product or service works, then concentrate on “how-to” content in your videos or blog articles.
Do you want to “emotionally” engage your audience or do you want to use “logic” in your content to steer them to your business?
These decisions need to be made FIRST before posting any content to ensure you are A) meeting the needs of your customers and B) your brand “voice” is consistent.
UNDERSTAND TRENDS IN YOUR INDUSTRY
As part of your social marketing strategy, you should have already identified your goals and your target audience, so now it’s time to focus on content. What are people talking about in your line of business? What issues, trends, news or events are occurring that your followers would be interested in and find of value?
What hashtags are popular among your target audience? Look at those and look at your competitors posts!. See what topics and content are relevant to their customers. It is likely they would be relevant to yours as well.
ASK QUESTIONS OF YOUR AUDIENCE AND GET THEIR FEEDBACK
This part of the engagement plan is critical to your success. You cannot just post and forget. You need to actively interact with your followers.
Depending on the platform, this could be in the form of asking for questions about your YouTube video, comments on your blog post or asking for a re-tweet with comments on Twitter.
These interactions include addressing negative comments. You don’t need to comment on every post that disagrees or challenges your position, but engaging with customers that do not like your article or video will help you find out WHY they posted the negative comment and give you an opportunity to try to address their concerns.
In summary, engagement with your existing and potential customers on social media is a requirement if you want to gain traction in getting Likes, Follows, Shares, Comments and
Re-tweets on the various social media platforms. The more you get, the greater chance of increasing traffic and conversions to your website and revenue to your bottom line.
For more ideas on how to increase social media engagement, this article can provide you with some additional tactics to consider.
