Rachel Smith — April 27, 2020 Given that we’re all working from home and will probably be for at least the next few weeks, if you’re looking for ways to engage your audience on social media to keep them interested and active, then here are a few things you can do.
Host Lives
Utilise your social media tools and host live sessions for your followers – topics can include anything from Q&A’s to a how-to tutorial on one of your products. The key here is to add value to your audience’s day – what are they going to get out of taking time out of their day to join your live stream? Perhaps look to offer an exclusive digital download or a free gift with their next order using a certain code at checkout.
If you’ve not done a live stream before, don’t worry. This is a chance for you to get to know your audience better and vice versa. People are a lot friendlier than you may think and putting a face behind your brand will make it easier for your audience to interact with you and be more susceptible to hearing you out and even buying products.
Run Giveaways
Another thing you can do is run a giveaway on your Instagram and there are many benefits for both you and your followers. Not only does a giveaway promote activity and engagement on your Instagram, but it also helps you to reach wider audiences.
For example, the rules of your giveaway should include at least these actions for your followers:
- Like the post
- Tag 2-3 friends in the comments
- Share on their story
These 3 things will give your post more reach to each person’s followers and therefore more exposure for your business. This may help you to gain more followers and more entrants for your giveaway. If you’ve managed to gain new followers then they will become aware of your online shop and perhaps make their way over to purchase from you. If you end up doing giveaways on a semi-regular basis you can hype up the next one you do and create some suspense across your social channels for it.
Be Active
This one may be simple but if you’re a business owner who wears many hats, interacting with your audience across your social media channels may get left behind. Make the time to ensure that you’re active on your channels on a daily basis. Reply to comments on your posts, answer questions that people have DM’d you and like and share your followers’ content if they tag you in posts with your products.
This kind of activity on a daily basis helps to encourage engagement on your social channels and will also help you to gain followers and get them excited interacting with you. Being active will also mean that your posts, stories and lives, pretty much anything you do, will be put in front of your followers on a more regular basis throughout the day.
Give Back
Something that you can do if you feel you can give back to your followers and customers. This can be a range of things from giving a free product to your first 100 customers, to giving a portion of your sales to a charity. Giving back helps to engage customers as they’ll want to do their part to help if you’re donating to charity and if they purchase from you it gives them a good feeling that they’ve done something to help.
If you’re giving away free products to your first 100 customers, for example, this will encourage FOMO buying in order for them to get that free product. FOMO is a really powerful tool so try to incorporate it into your sales tactics. But from the customers perspective, you’re giving away a product for free, as a thank you for being one of the first 100 customers to make a purchase.
Your social media activity can also help support your SEO goals not just for your social media channels but also your main online shop. We’ve put together a social media SEO guide to help you utilise tools to help your website rank via your social media channels.
Download the full free guide here.
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