Social Media engagement should be an important aspect for all businesses as it gets to the heart of the relationship between consumers and brands. There are many different forms of social media engagement such as; Likes, Favourites, Shares, Retweets and Comments. Many businesses struggle with engagement over social media because even though a business may post regularly, consumers will just not listen to them, which is why companies need to increase their social media engagement.
Engagement over social media is responsiveness, responding to your customers makes them feel noticed and worth your time. Below are some key points on how to increase your social media engagement.
Improve content
Before you even start to write your website content you need to have in mind who your target audience is and what they want to see from your website. For example if you own a restaurant will there be an option for people to download your menu? Depending on how old the restaurant is or if the restaurant has a big history you could include that in your content.
Write content that makes sense! Content is the enabling agent for social media engagement. Your content attracts people to your website, those people ‘like’ your website and so the knock on effect will be that they follow you on your social media.
You need to make sure that the content on your website is searchable and accessible for potential new customers to find it.
In addition make sure that you update regularly and have relevant content on your website. This is because it is not only customers and potential prospects that read your content, Search Engines like Google do too and with frequently updated, relevant content the Search Engine will push your website closer to the top.
Ask questions
It is very important to ask questions when talking to people through social media. People want to be heard so asking questions seems like the obvious choice to include in your social engagement strategy. Furthermore it has been proven that asking questions are more likely to generate around twice as many comments as any other post types on Facebook. For example if your company specialises in coffee making and decorating you could upload some of your ‘coffee art’ to Facebook and ask your fans and friends to send in their pictures. You could also, possibly make a competition out of this which may result in more social engagement.
Surveys
Communication between you and your customers should be very important to you, not only will it tell you what they like and dislike about your website, which you can alter, but your customers or potential customers can help you to create website content. UGC which stands for User Generated Content is content that has been derived from your customers; a brilliant way to do this is by sending out surveys or short questionnaires. Depending on whether or not the questions in the survey are open or closed you could get your target audience to design your website as well. The surveys that you receive back from your audience are very important due to the fact that they know what they like and they are your customers, so working your website around them is the way forward. However do not forget to add some of your own personality to it!
Use images and videos
Nothing grabs people’s attention more than pictures and videos, especially funny ones. Customers love seeing a personal touch behind the content that is posted on social media accounts. It drives more interaction due to the fact that there is more to talk about and customers are more likely to ‘Like’ or ‘Favourite’ a picture if the picture is of a smilingcat, for example. Informational pictures are becoming more popular, especially infographics that contain facts. Part of the reason why these have become so popular is due to the fact that 90% of all information transmitted to the brain is visual and around 40% of people will respond more effectively. Visual content also drives engagement. Apparently, on Facebook’s timeline when brands were posting visual content such as photos and videos a 65% increase in engagement was seen.
Respond to comments
It is important to respond to comments whether they are positive or negative. Responding to customers is an important thing! Everyone wants to be noticed and giving your fans a shout-out is a brilliant way to maintain their interest in you. However you do not need to respond to every tweet or comment that is made. It is good to respond to customers that have asked a question, made a strong statement, made a request or pointed out a mistake. Do not be afraid of negative comments either, the beauty of social media engagement is that you can reach out and connect to all your customers and apologise or explain and give your side of the story. Also many people who I have spoken to get genuinely excited when a company tweets them back or comments on an Instagram post. Taking into account the amount of followers some businesses have, for example, Nike, when they respond to your tweet you will feel some enjoyment considering the millions of followers they have.
Have well targeted followers
Make sure you have set up social media accounts that are relevant to your audience. Having well targeted follower’s means that your followers are interested in what you are selling and what you have to say, which gives the knock-on-effect of having more interaction with your fans. To get well targeted followers take your fans on a journey with you, show them that your business has a personal side to it, giving them an insight on your latest projects and events that may be happening in the office. Also being transparent with your fans is important, everyone is human and everyone makes mistake so instead of only showing your achievements why not post your challenges?
Overall, social engagement over social media is very important for a company to thrive and do well. One of the main aspects in having successful social media engagement is to respond to customers and to talk to them without patronising them. Another important point to make is to be careful when posting certain content, always make sure that it is relevant and make sure that the wording is correct.
Article by Lydia Reynolds
