A report from Thunderhead, a SaaS solutions provider said only one in four businesses feel confident in their customer engagement methods. The reason is the state of fear, confusion, and lack of clear strategies when it comes to engaging customers online. Most of it is not related to technical problems or the lack of software and tools available. It is something related to artistry, creativity, and imagination, the same free and straightforward traits that are required on the user’s level when they work to promote their posts and stories.
Let’s try you’re comfortable with how to engage and build your brand on social mediums. Here’s a general good practices’ guide to be followed on all the social sites.
1.Providing More Social Customer Care
How well you use networks like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to build a great customer experience is increasing your engagement with your audience. As on related study found that more than 60 % of users visit a particular business page for customer support issues rather than marketing or buying needs.
When customers decide to engage with your business on social media, they’re essentially putting trust in your brand to solve their problem.
Sprout Social Q2 2016 Index – “Social media as the most preferred channel for customers to engage with brands” showed 35%, the highest number of people who want to engage with the brands over social media.
2.Online Conversation
Start the Conversation by posting attractive, beautiful images and content that’s interesting
Imagine about social media engagement as a long-term relationship where someone to initiate the conversation to get things going. At social media, it has to be your brand.
You can check Choose Chicago which is a perfect example to watch. It constantly posts great Tweets with links to blog posts about why you should visit Chicago.
3.Promote Your Brand Enthusiasts
An excellent way to show you’re willing to get the conversation going is by promoting enthusiasts’ content. For example, on Instagram, you could ask for customers to @mention you or use a branded hashtag to show off a new product.
By posting user-generated content, you’re essentially showcasing your customers. This also helps pull others who are on the fence to interact with your brand by giving a channel to communicate.
3.Current Events & Topical Subjects
You can post something which is trending, going viral or solely in the news to bring new traffic to your social networks into things like hashtag holidays, events or live shows in your area.
Live Response
Provide your customers with quick and timely answers rather than a straightforward “yes” or “no” to them is not adequate to truly engage anyone.
Home Depot is great at answering questions in full on Facebook posts within minutes.
4.Social Media team
Your brand can receive different questions, comments, and concerns on social media. To ensure you are fully engaged to users, your social media team should be well-trained, equipped and ready to handle incoming messages.
Content Creators: Develop, ideate and schedule your social content. Use social media
calendar in planning across all teams.
Community Managers: should be there to handle a hostile customer or major news about
your brand.
With the growth of different social mediums which are available for engaging the online audience, let’s also glance at their specific advantages. There exist some differences in tools and their usage available in each of these engaging applications.
5.YouTube
YouTube content or video content, is the preferred format for today’s consumer. In fact, four times as many people would prefer to watch a video about a product than reading about it. People are far more likely to retain your message when they see it via video. Here we are talking about a 95% retention rate versus 10% for text. Your video at YouTube should be,
Easy to understand. The video should be clear and the message simple to understand.
Brief. The ideal length of YouTube content according to a study is two minutes or less.
You should proactively drive traffic to your YouTube account. The most pragmatic way is to share your videos on social media, email to your contacts, talk about the content on your blog, and embed them on your site.
Sofinco ( France ) won the Customer Engagement prize at the fourth YouTube Lab to promote revolving credit in an off-beat video called “How much for a thousand Euros?” The video garnered over one million views in just seven days, a record for this promotion.
6.Twitter
Twitter engagement campaigns
Twitter campaigns that are based explicitly on engagement. The engagement campaigns enable online store owners to select their audience which increases the chances of quality content seen by the right people. The campaigning tweets are labeled to promote, yet they function like regular tweets in every other respect, including retweets, replies, and favorites.
The targeting of the audience is basing on
Interests: There are 350 different categories of user’s interests for retailers to choose between them.
Followers: this category is to target individuals who follow similar accounts, which is useful for connecting with a niche audience.
Keywords: Segmenting by keywords allows users to reach users searching for or tweeting a particular word of a phrase, enabling real-time communication with potential customers.
Twitter had also introduced the buy button so users could make purchases directly from the platform.
7.Instagram
Aid on sales, offers, events
Like the other social media channels, Instagram can help promote sales, offers, and events by providing users with an update on what’s going on— your branded graphic will stand out in their Instagram feeds.It’s not only about selling your product. Yes, your products will feature but make sure they are done beautifully, appropriately cropped, and tagged with relevant hashtags.
The new limit at Instagram allows for a wider range of content – from how-to demos, quick unboxings, sharing the 30 seconds or even a 60-second TV spot (careful, there), and more live. Coverage of events, launches, product demos, etc. Whether its a story in a single video or a series of ads that lead to the next episode; you can tell a fascinating story in your ads.
Encourage participation
Contest One of the most popular forms of Instagram contests is to ask users to post pictures and use a dedicated hashtag and choosing a user depending upon the likes for the post. Contests are a simple and easy way to increase the number of followers.
Gap asked followers to show its best festival look — with the hashtag #styldby providing the contestants a chance to win a VIP experience to the Sasquatch Festival, a music event.
A captivating series of 11 photos taken from entries, sent from participants, and it was quite a hit contest on Instagram.
Feature your fans
You should endeavor to get people to post relevant images of your company to attract more publication. The more you reward people for their efforts, the more likely they are to participate.
Ben Jerry’s, an Ice cream company frequently post photos it has received from fans enjoying their ice cream.
You must always respond to comments and queries – and as well, in particular to great image contributions to your brand by followers. You could run competitions, ask for user posts around your hashtags and about how they use your product – champion their stories.
Which posts are doing well? What kind of images gets the best engagement? Have you timed your posts right? Remember insights is key. Use a tool like Iconosquare. It tells you your total number of likes received, your most liked photos, the average number of likes and comments per photo, your follower growth charts and more advanced analytics.
8.Use the “The power of hashtags.”
On Instagram, the users can search content and find new profiles to follow, via hashtags.
Clothing retailer Free People uses a mix of branded and generic hashtags to build awareness and generate leads. You can include up to 30 hashtags for your content on Instagram.
