Social media is a leading industry tool to bring brand awareness to the forefront of markets. More than ever, your business’ online reputation weighs heavily on your success due to the unlimited availability of content published daily online. In the majority of marketing and advertising methods, communication is a one-way street from company to customer. However, social media is the most engaging two-way communication medium for customer relations. Because of this aspect, engaging your followers can make or break your brand’s reputation.
When you take the first step into social media, it’s a conscious effort and commitment to practice. Social media is a long-term investment due to the ever-changing and evolving world. Unlike a website, where you can technically set it up and leave it be (though you shouldn’t), social media has to be updated on a consistent basis to be successful and engage your audience. There’s nothing worse than researching a company on Facebook and seeing that its last post was in 2012! Once the decision has been made to create a presence on social media, the next step is to build an audience to engage.
When launching one’s business on social media, everyone starts at zero. Fortunately, there are tactics to building an audience. Promoting the accounts to friends, contacts and other known sources can help organically kick-start a new profile into building an audience. From there, the profile can grow and bloom. A different tactic is to utilize paid advertisements to place the profiles before target demographics. This can help build the numbers, but building a quality audience does require time and patience.
There are several tips for social engagement that everyone should follow:
Quality vs. Quantity
While it’s important to post regularly, the quality of content will always trump a handful of meaningless posts. Take the time to find content that provides benefits, insights and value to your audience to ensure engagement. By publishing quality and engaging content, an appropriate audience will be sure to follow.
Five tips to quality engagement:
- Engage your followers with contests, questions, comments, provoking thoughts, etc.
- Everyone likes a winner, so showcase where you and your fans are winning. This provides positive, encouraging content that everyone wants to see.
- Integrate your social media with your website and encourage participation.
- Give away free stuff! Providing a free product or service to your loyal customers who follow you on social media is a great way to get feedback and keep them loyal.
- Plan ahead. Strategize about your audience and create a long-term social media plan to make sure you stay on track with your goals.
Share About Your Brand, And Others
While it technically is your page, no one wants to listen to “me, me, me” on a regular basis. Thinking of social media as a social gathering will greatly benefit your engagement and strategy. A healthy ratio for posting content is roughly 40 percent self-promotion (your products, services, events, news, etc.) and 60 percent interesting and engaging content from outside sources. Think of this scenario: If you’re at a cocktail party and you’re talking with a person who is solely talking about themselves, how interested and invested in the conversation are you? The answer is probably not at all!
Listening Is Key
It’s not enough to just post content out there and leave it. Monitoring the posts, comments from users, and suggestions will decide the fate of a social profile. Customers love social media because it gives them a voice. But what good is that voice if no one is listening? Monitor your profiles and respond back to your followers. Also, take their suggestions into consideration. Who knows? The next big idea to boost your company to the next level could come from a complete stranger who follows you on Twitter.
Personalize Interactions
When interacting with your followers, personalize your responses, rather than posting a canned response, so they know you care. This will create a closer bond between your brand and your followers. This personalization expresses gratitude and makes your brand appear more authentic to those who interact with you.
Engaging your audience and building a community is what it’s all about in the end. Too often, social media is treated as just another marketing outlet by businesses and left to dwindle. Don’t let that happen to yours! Take the time to foster your profiles— they’re essentially your brand’s face and personality online, so why not give a little nourishment to them? By engaging and listening to your audience and maintaining your profiles, you’ll have a social media presence that will lead to success.
