Over the years, social media has evolved and become an important communication channel for brands and a vital component of any business’ marketing strategy. As traditional methods of marketing are becoming less engaging and therefore less effective, businesses are turning to social media marketing as it enables them to engage in a two-way conversation with their customers and allows consumers to connect with their favourite brands in a completely new way. This then has a positive impact on business as engagement has proven to be a key driver for success and brand growth through increased brand awareness and conversion. Even with such positive outcomes, many businesses underestimate the value of engagement and solely focus their efforts on creating content to promote their products and services. Although frequent content creation is also important, it is engagement that helps fuel sales and therefore should be the focus of any business’ marketing strategy. If you feel you aren’t effectively communicating with your customers, here are some simple tips you can incorporate into your social media marketing strategy to increase your engagement.
Create content with the customer in mind
The main focus of your posts should be to provide valuable, relevant and consistent content as opposed to just advertising your product or service to consumers. This kind of content creation not only helps to build a strong customer relationship where consumers feel they can trust your brand, but it also helps to drive conversions by giving followers the information they need to make an educated purchase decision. Another way to stimulate interest in your posts and encourage users to read your content is by making them visually appealing. Including imagery, videos, memes, gifs, emojis and other forms of visual content is an effective social media marketing strategy to increase engagement as consumers in general are more attracted to visual content than written.
Create a conversation
Although content creation is useful for informing customers about your brand, there’s more you can do.Joining groups or creating them can help to generate brand awareness and get your name heard especially if you don’t have a large following to begin with. The best way to maximise the chances of reaching your target audience is to join forums and groups that are relevant to your industry as it is likely that the consumers you are reaching are already interested in the type of products or services you provide. When posting in groups, it is a good idea to incorporate questions to encourage conversation instead of simply posting information about your brand. Asking questions helps to spark discussion with potential customers and encourages users to share their opinions about the content you’ve written about. More dialogue means increased engagement! But always remember to check the group rules as some don’t allow corporate posts.
Another way to interact with customers and keep the conversation flowing is to directly respond to comments and personalise them according to the user. Greeting customers using their name helps to present your brand as a friendly, customer service focused business as opposed to a large organisation. This helps to foster a positive relationship with your customers and as a result increase brand loyalty. Using wit and humour in responses is also a great way to entertain users, encourage more comments and keep consumers engaged. Just make sure it’s judged correctly.
Schedule posts at the right time
Scheduling content is a great social media marketing strategy that ensures followers don’t miss any of your content as it allows you to post at peak engagement times. In order to maximise your reach and ensure your followers see your content creation, it is important to determine when users are most likely to be active on social media and then schedule your content accordingly. The best times to post depends on a number of factors such as target audience demographic and time zone as well as the social media platform you’re using. As a general guide, we recommend posting on Facebook between 1pm and 4pm, on Instagram at around lunchtime and after 5pm, on LinkedIn before 9am and after 5pm and on Twitter between 12pm and 3pm. In order to determine when engagement is at its peak for your business, we recommend running some tests on each of the different platforms and observing when users are commenting, liking and sharing the most.
Offer Incentives for Social Sharing
Offering an incentive to customers is an effective method of social media marketing as it rewards and encourages users for their active engagement. This strategy is a great way to boost engagement as consumers are more likely to get involved with a brand if it means they will receive something in return. This could be in the form of a free gift, coupon code, discount or the chance to win an even bigger prize. The use of incentives can also help to grow your following by making it a requirement for users to follow if they want to receive the rewards.
The key to becoming a successful social media user is in the engagement. These are just some of the tips you can incorporate into your social media marketing strategy to increase your engagement and as a result drive your conversions! Users spend hours every day on their devices and more specifically on social media, so it is a great opportunity for your business to attract the attention of consumers and connect with them, otherwise you run the risk of users engaging with your competitors. If you would like to increase your engagement, but don’t feel comfortable or don’t have the time to do it on your own, Digital Freak are here to help! To find out what social media services we can provide for you, contact us today.
I take a spark and turn it into a fireworks show! From internal client communications to LinkedIn authority articles, social media, and blogs, I write it all. My aim is to represent clients authentically with high-quality content that Google loves. I’ll show consumers why you’re the business they want to work with, buy from, and follow for life!
