Social media is still one of the areas that businesses’ have a lot to learn about. They need to overcome their fear of open engagement and start forming connections with their audience. Businesses will also make the mistake of using social media as a tool for only sharing content without any personalization. While these are common beginners’ mistakes, businesses usually grow out of them as they learn from experience. What they continue to struggle with, is social media engagement, here’s some simple tips that can help you refine your social media strategy:
Finding the right customers
Social media is a vast space filled with all kinds of people. In this space, it is easy for companies to get caught connecting with the most number of people rather than the right kind of people. Although, reaching people is one of the key aspects of social media marketing, if you don’t reach the right kind of people then your efforts will not yield desired results. The best way to do figure out your target audience is by tracking analytics at each step of the marketing process. Track which social media sites gets the most leads, which site generates more customers and everything in between. This will show you where you can focus your efforts and give you information on the people that are likely to become customers. Another way is to ask new customers what social media sites they use and how they found out about your business.
Diversifying Content
As a business, it is easy to forget that you’re trying to reach out to people instead of just promoting to them. Posting content, business news and promotions is a must but it is important to sprinkle a little fun in there. Talk about office events, share pictures, and humanize your company. Even if you want to just share content, add diversity to it. Don’t stick to the same blogs – add tips, provide research, strategies, insights, others’ content – and anything else you can think of. Experiment without restriction and see what kind of content gets the best response. Make it a regular process – experiment, find out what works, work on it and experiment again.
Be Active
On social media, everything is old news in a matter of minutes. It is important for you to be active on a regular basis and connect with your audience as much as possible. One thing to avoid is lip service, where you post the same comments every time someone shares your content or leaves a comment. Make an effort to understand and respond comprehensibly to what they’re saying. The aim of engagement is to build loyalty and trust among your customers. To build this, you have to be genuine and show interest in what they have to say. If your business has a Facebook page or a LinkedIn group, you can start discussions on relevant topics. On Twitter, you an conduct and organize chats. Decide what works best for your company and work accordingly.
Timing and Number of Posts
To increase engagement, experts recommend posting around 10 times a day. These 10 posts must include a combination of original posts, curated content, and 1-2 unrelated posts. The time that you share is also important because your target audience needs to be active when you post. In order to have the best chance of replies, likes and comments, post between 8AM – 8PM according to your target audience’s timezone. Posting too many times could irritate users and turn them away.
Encourage more Followers
To grow your network, you have to encourage more and more people to join it. People within this network will receive all your updates and are likely to engage with you as a result. A simple method of promoting existing social media channels is to ask your customer reps, business team and anyone else who interacts with customers to promote your social media account as a signature in their emails.
Employee advocacy is another great way to get more people interested in your companies’ social media channels. It gives employees a voice while letting customers into the mindset of your company. Moreover, customers are likely to listen to the opinions of their friends as opposed to a company page. If done right, employee advocacy can provide a big boost for your company.
When creating and promoting content on social media, it is important to keep your content relevant. Many bigger blogs usually create ways to tie-in the latest current events and trends to their content. Small businesses could learn from this and put their own spin on the technique. Remember to always create content for your audience’s needs and be consistent.
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