Engagement is one of the most sought after metrics in social media marketing. There is no point to putting so much time and effort into creating content and publishing it online if no one is going to see it. Without engagement, your social media is useless. So what do you do when you need to increase social media engagement for your brand or business?
Here are 8 Ways to Get More Engagement on Social Media
1. Ask Questions
If you don’t ask, you don’t get. Start integrating simple questions into your captions. Open-ended questions usually encourage followers to get a bit more involved, you can ask customers to guess what you’re working on (with a teaser image) etc. You may get no answers at first but keep at it (maybe get some employees to answer to get the ball rolling).
2. Polls
Twitter natively support polls, which can be a great content mix up/engagement generator. Ask a question that is related to both your company and your follower’s interests. For example a restaurant or food brand can ask “What is your favorite meal of the day?” with choices for breakfast, lunch, and dinner – it’s an easy question anyone can answer. That was a very basic example, but your polls can get pretty detailed and offer you insight into your customer’s behaviors and preferences – which you can in turn use to develop better content or even products. You can even leverage real-time (brand related) conversations and events to create your polls about. Redirect traffic to your Twitter poll, create a simple image and messaging for your poll or create polls using third party tools. In the meantime, check out my Twitter poll 🙂
Which #socialmedia network is your favorite/offers the most return for #business or #brand?#SMM #Marketing
— Dhariana Lozano (@DhariLo) July 5, 2016
3. Get Your Audience Involved In Choices
This is probably one of the simplest ways to drum up some engagement. As humans we love being part of things, so get your audience involved in some brand choices. Whether that’s suggesting a new flavor, gauging interest in a new product, or choosing a packaging style for your next shipment – let your audience in on the action. One major benefit of this tactic? Customers are telling you exactly what they want, which can end up in more sales for you. Here is an example of a post I created (a while ago) for a salt water taffy brand. The post asking which wrapper fans preferred got a total of 37 comments on Instagram!
4. Leverage User Generated Content
Consumers are getting better and better at creating content. Use this to your advantage and feature images created by your customers. Take it a step further and encourage others to take photos, use your brand’s hashtag and get featured on your account. Remember to credit photos!
5. Testimonials
Testimonials are another form of user generated content you can use to your advantage. Highlight exceptional reviews, show appreciation and thank your patrons and invite others to leave feedback as well.
6. Talk To People
In order to get engagement one must engage! Respond to comments and concerns, and make it a point to take time to search for relevant conversations or chats and groups to get involved in. Try to think a little outside the box when it comes to the conversations you join – by this I mean besides looking at conversations directly targeted towards your industry try finding some that are related but still relevant to your target end user.
7. Drive Traffic From Your More Popular Networks
If you have one network in particular that is a little more active than the rest, funnel some of that traffic to the ones that need help. Remember the Twitter polls we discussed earlier?
Last but not least…
8. Run A Contest Or Giveaway
Giveaways, promotions, and contests are some of the best ways to drive quick engagement wins. Offer a discount, give away some product, or run a customer appreciation campaign. Your promo can be simple, like asking your followers to retweet or repost a photo along with a hashtag to enter. There are also third party tools like Rafflecopter to require social media follows and shares for extra entries and to manage your campaigns.
I hope these customer engagement post ideas have stirred up your creative minds! The most important thing to remember about reaching higher engagement on social media is to be patient and consistent. Raising your social media engagement won’t happen overnight, so don’t give up!
This article was originally posted here.
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