Three Effective Ways To Boost Social Media Customer Engagement
As a business owner, you are probably well-aware of the benefits of social media. Done correctly, being active on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can help strengthen your relationships with your customers, increase customer loyalty and also boost your own image as a reputable company.
Of course, the key words in that last sentence are “done correctly.” Too many business social media pages are chock full of trite “likes,” retweets, cutesy memes and shares.
In order to increase your customers’ social media engagement in an effective and more clever way, please check out the following ideas:
Make Your Posts Visual
If you are only posting text on social media pages, you might blend into the zillions of other bland posts on Facebook, Twitter and the like. In order to catch peoples’ eyes, make your social media posts as visual as possible. In addition to looking great, visually appealing posts can grab the attention of people who tend to skip over plain text posts.
For example, if you own a local bakery, posting a close up shot of hot and fresh cookies with a simple message like “look what just came out of the oven” will be more effective than merely posting “hey, come on in and enjoy a hot chocolate chip cookie” with no image.
A company that really does this approach very well is Amway; their Jobs page is chock full of colorful photo and image tiles that people can click on to get additional information about a variety of topics. For example, click on the colorful photo that says “Explore our Campus” and visitors to the page will get to take an interactive virtual campus tour.
Choose “The Faces of Amway” and read compelling and personal stories of people who work for the organization, along with their photos.
Respond to All Comments
A great way to increase social media engagement is to focus on the word “social.” If a customer sends you a message, asks a question on your page or comments on one of your posts, they are giving you an open door to communicate with them.
Regardless of whether they leave a positive or negative review, respond to each and every person who posts on your social media pages.
In addition to expressing your appreciation for their business and answering any questions they might have about your products and services, you can reply to any negative reviews with a genuine apology and promise to make things right.
Greet each customer by name in your posts and sign your own name as well; this will help to personalize the social media experience even more and show that you are a real person posting about your business and not some automated posting program.
Start a Conversation
Another great way to boost social media customer engagement is by creating a conversation with your customers.
For example, you can ask a general question about your products and let the visitors to your site weigh in on what they think. As Social Media Week notes, Domino’s Pizza in the UK used this approach very effectively by polling people on their thoughts about pineapple on pizza and asking whether or not customers would ban the fruit.
People could reply with an emoji thumbs up or down or express their feelings on the subject. Going back to the cookie example, you could poll your visitors to ask “Sugar or Chocolate Chip — Which Dunks in Milk Better?” along with colorful photos of the two cookies and a tall glass of milk.
Social media is still a great way to reach out to customers and advertise your brand, but in order to be as effective as possible, it’s important to go beyond posting memes and gifs and inspirational quotes and instead focus on getting your valued customers engaged with your company.
By creating eye-catching posts about your product, responding to every single post in a sincere way and creating polls and other fun conversational topics, your customers will definitely feel more engaged with you and your company.
About the Author Jess Nielsen
Jess has spent years travelling the world full-time. Nothing else comes close to the reaches of this emotive activity...