What is Social Media Engagement and Why is it important for a Business

Pushing your Brand starts with Social Media Engagements

Reaching your target audience was the need of the hour. Now, your brand needs more. You now need to be able to converse with that audience and build their trust in your brand and not just that. You need to keep the conversation going.

Social Media Engagement is the current need of the hour. Read on to know more..

What is Social Media Engagement?

Social Media Engagement is the interaction between people and brands on social networks. For example, on Facebook, engagement includes likes, comments and shares where the customer is directly conversing with the representative of the brand to build a relationship.

A survey of 45 CMOs by Esteban Kolsky found that most didn’t understand the definition of engagement. Understanding of Social Media Engagement is key in optimizing the full potential of Social Media Marketing, making it simpler to measure the impact.

Social Media Engagement is not just a single interaction with one of your customers. It is a constant, ongoing connection for a (perceived) long period of time. Social Media Engagement is about how you utilise networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to better a customer’s experience with your brand. You want them to relate to your brand and find a personal connection that keeps them coming back.

When customers decide to engage with your business over social media, they put their trust into your company and that’s exactly what we are aiming for here!

Measuring and tweaking your success

One thing that is important to keep in mind is that with Social Media Management, knowing your audience and understanding their likes and dislikes is important to get the best results. More importantly, each social media platform has a different method to reach your best audience and get the most organic engagements. Facebook will define engagement as Likes, comments, shares, stories and impressions, while Twitter sees communication as @mentions, Retweets, hashtags and direct messages. Even networks like Instagram give you the chance to interact with customers through @mentions, comments and hashtags.

Here are a couple of tips to improve your social media engagement:

1.Talk to your Audience

Opening up lines of communication is a sure-fire way to increase the level of trust a customer has in your business. There a many ways to do this, for example, a Q&A competition on twitter or just a general AMA (ask me anything).

Humanising your brand to the customer helps them form a connection more easily and increases their push to make conversation.

2. Make your Customers feel special

On Instagram, your customers could @mention or hashtag your company using your product. This shows a larger audience consisting of their followers that your company’s product/branding is to be trusted. Posting user-generated content is a great way to give a shout out to your customers and to further your social engagement. This also helps push others who are on the fence to interact with your brand by being open and relatable.

Choosing the hashtag also is important. Unique hashtags can be tracked and help you analyse your results. Also, the more relatable the hashtag, the more people with use it.

3. Keep your Content Current

Current news is a hot pot of topics to mix in with your brand’s content to try to reach out to a larger audience. Topics that are trending, going viral or simply in the news, can be used to bring organic search traffic to your brand if your content is relevant and informative. For example, the elections, a protest, or even events in your area (if that is your target demographic) can be used as fodder for content.

But caution is a must. Do not involve your brand in controversial topics or take too hard a stance against a social cause that could stand to hurt your brand. That’s what your personal social media accounts are for!

4. Don’t Keep Them Waiting!

Respond to questions as fast as possible. There are apps and management platforms to keep yourself updated with all the queries and questions coming in. Make sure you respond within an hour, so that your customers know you’re listening.

The same goes for posting content. Don’t keep your customers waiting for news or information about your brand. Only if you post content on a regular basis will your customers know you’re alive and still kicking. As the saying goes, ‘Out of sight, Out of mind’. Constantly seeing your content will keep you in their minds and increase your chances of positive interaction.

Building a customer’s trust in your brand doesn’t happen overnight or with just a single interaction. You need to keep the conversation flowing. So start talking!