With over 79% of the US population having a social media profile, many brands understand the importance of incorporating a social media presence into their digital marketing strategy. But while many look at having tons of followers as the only measure of success, they often fail to truly interact with their followers and miss opportunities to increase engagement.
Why is engagement important?
- Boost brand awareness: If a potential new follower comes to your profile and sees your brand taking the time to regularly interact with followers, it instantly paints a positive picture in their mind. This allows you to more easily showcase who your brand is and what values it stands for.
- Get your message seen: Thanks to ever-changing algorithms, organic posts are unfortunately being shown to less and less of your followers. Once platforms see that your audience is commenting, sharing, and liking, they begin showing it to more and more people because to them that's "content that people want to see".
- Improve brand loyalty: You should look at social media as an extension of your customer service experience. When your followers see that you're answering questions, addressing concerns, and working to build relationships, they'll trust your brand more than your competitors who are simply only posting.
How to Create Social Engagement:
- Be consistent: Social media moves fast, and if users never see your content or feel like your page is becoming inactive, they won't hesitate to unfollow. The simplest way to combat this and to remain constant is to create a content calendar before publishing your posts. This will help you more easily plan out your campaigns and assist you in keeping up with a regular schedule.
- Ask questions: Here's a secret, people love sharing their opinions. Especially on the internet. Make it as easy as possible for people to comment by asking them direct questions. It can be something more on the fun side (what's your favorite cookie flavor for National Cookie Day) or it can be something more product related (which dress print do you like best?).
- Show your brand’s personality: While it's important that you post product or sale related posts, only doing so is an easy way for people to become uninterested in your content and stop following your page. Engagement focused posts are a great chance to humanize your brand. They provide the opportunity to pull back the curtain and show your customers the people behind the page.
- Encourage sharing: When creating your post, you always want to post some sort of call to action at the end of it. When you make it clear what you want people to do, they're more likely to do it. And when they share your posts, they're showing your content to an entirely new audience who might not have seen it normally.
- Don’t end the conversation: If people are engaging with your content, engage back with them. Conversational marketing can play a huge part in creating brand loyalty. You always want to make sure you're doing this with potentially negative comments, but also responding back to positive comments shows that your brand cares about what your customers think.
It's important that you work to take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. Having a social media presence is a great first step but it's not enough. Have questions on how you can both get your followers engaging as well as engaging back with them? Contact the experts at Informatics.
