Of all the metrics you pour over, social media engagement has to rank among the top in terms of importance, because engagement leads to sales. If you have your engagement strategy down, it means you’re developing a relationship and establishing a loyal audience.
Improving social media engagement levels relies heavily on your content, but you can’t create great content unless you know what the definition of “great” is with your target audience. This means you have to get involved in the conversation and be a good listener.
Listen With Intent
You want to make sure you don’t make every post solely about your company, your products and/or your services. For example, you should schedule some posts that have to do with what’s going on in your industry, not your company. You can also prove that it’s not all about you by retweeting posts that are of interest to you and your target audience, and respond to comments. Also, you can jump in on conversations in other peoples’ posts with comments that bring value to the conversation.
While you’re doing this, you’re listening to your audience, which provides you insights that can help develop your content in a way that will be more impactful and gain more likes, responses, shares and retweets.
Remember, it’s not all about self-promotion; it’s about listening, contributing to the conversation and being part of the community as a whole.
Conversation Starters
Triggering is generally thought of as lighting someone’s fuse and provoking a confrontation. But for social media engagement, that’s not the kind of triggering you want to focus on.
Social media marketing triggers are used to get a conversation started, and they can include enticing images or video, contests, user generated content, testimonials and questions. What triggers your audience to respond?
Twitter polls are a great trigger that involve asking questions. You can use them to tap into trending topics, get feedback that helps you make product and brand decisions or just lighten the mood on a Monday morning with something comedic.
Continuing the Conversation
Don’t let a learning moment fade away. For instance, let’s say someone responds to a video post with, “Loved the video.” If you reply with, “Thanks,” and leave it there, you’re missing out on an opportunity to find out what they really liked about it. Respond graciously, but inquire about what parts of the video they liked or what they took away from the experience.
Continue the social media engagement conversation with us our team at SJC Marketing. We’re working with our clients on a daily basis to improve their engagement rates and we’ll do the same for you.