It goes without saying that social media plays an important role in everyone’s lives nowadays.
Regardless of whether it’s a business of any size or even an individual, social media touches almost every part of human lives.
For businesses, social media is of great value. It allows them to reach millions of people across the globe.
Social media provides a highly cost-effective platform to popularize the business, brands, products, and services, and other sales and marketing-related functions.
And in coming years, we might witness social media assume a more important role in business activities.
Today I’ll be talking about the importance of Social media and how you can take maximum benefit out of it by increasing your social media engagement.
Let’s get started.
Understanding Importance of Social Media
Social media serves several purposes for small and large, old and new businesses.
One of the best ways nowadays is also to start a blog either for business or yourself.
In fact, blog readership is increasing by the day, especially in wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as people spend more hours online.
A blog can play a key role in promoting any business or helping an individual create their own brand.
However, a good blog also requires superb digital marketing processes, which include social media marketing as well.
Hence, it’s proving to be a vital resource for all kinds of organizations.
Here’re some reasons why social media plays an important role for businesses.
Selling Directly Through Social Media
Social media provides a superb launch pad for new businesses.
Since social media platforms are free or rather economical to use, several new entrepreneurs choose social media to popularize their business.
And get orders too.
For example, Facebook Marketplace is a free resource that allows small businesses or individual craftsperson to post ads free of cost to attract buyers.
Facebook Business is a paid resource that businesses often use to promote their products and services while getting customers.
Checkout: Apps to sell things online
It’s also possible to accept payments through Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Business. Or provide links to place orders and pay on other platforms.
Greater Customer Engagement
Greater customer engagement is one of the key roles that social media plays for all sorts of businesses nowadays.
For example, customers can engage with all or some of your posts that attract or are relevant to their needs.
In many instances, customers and other stakeholders in your business can also post comments or chat either with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot or a human customer care executive.
Responding to comments and chats is a clear indicator to customers that you’re business cares and isn’t unresponsive.
This in turn helps to build a superb brand reputation.
Nowadays, when competition among businesses is fierce responding to comments and chats can provide a clear edge to your enterprise.
Greater customer engagement often translates as loyalty, which is something very desirable for every business.
Social Media Helps Innovation
American management expert, Peter F. Drucker rightly says: “Every business has two functions- marketing and innovation.”
Social media makes both of these possible.
It’s imperative for every business serious of sustaining itself and prospering to meet the challenges of time.
This is possible by innovating products and services as well as delivery channels. Social media makes this possible.
Customers usually post comments on what improvements they’d like to see in your product or service and their delivery channel.
By listening to customers, you can quickly innovate various elements of your business and inform followers through social media.
Now let’s talk a bit about increasing engagement on Social media to sustain all benefits.
Tips to Increase Social Media Engagement
Now that we’re aware of the importance of social media for every business, here’re some top tips that could help you increase engagement.
You can adapt these tips and tweaks to suit your business and its needs since each enterprise has different requirements.
Post Relevant, Interesting & Timely Content
Every digital marketer will definitely agree that content is the king of every marketing effort.
The same holds true for social media.
Why would people ‘Like’ or ‘Follow” your Facebook page, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Snapchat, and LinkedIn accounts?
They’ll do so only when they’re genuinely interested in some element of your business and its offerings.
Therefore, content also holds the key to social media engagement.
To engage clients and other stakeholders or even to generate business leads, you’ll require superb content that’s relevant to your target audience.
Additionally, all social media content has to be interesting enough to engage people.
And thirdly, all social media content has to be timely.
This is possible by hiring a good social media content creator either full-time or a freelancer on a part-time basis.
Such professionals would know the kind of social media content that people love to follow and read as well as share with relatives and friends.
Post Customer Testimonials
People love stories.
And especially, if they’re true-life stories that your customers can identify with.
To increase engagement on social media, invite video testimonials from happy customers.
Short videos of five minutes to 10 minutes would suffice. If you solicit such videos, several customers would willingly send one.
You could ask them to answer a few questions about how a product or service from your business is helping them.
Obviously, such videos would be amateurish, but that really doesn’t matter as long as it’s clear and audible to viewers.
Such videos can be easily shot over smartphones and uploaded by customers.
Alternatively, you can request customers to send in their pictures with a brief caption that speaks about their satisfaction with your business offerings.
Often, this simple tip works like magic.
Those who send videos or pictures tend to share them from your social media platform with their relatives and friends.
And it’s possible these relatives and friends can also start following your social media pages while becoming customers of your business.
Post Relevant News & Information
Often you’ll come across interesting news that concerns the field of your business.
It could hold some information that really matters to customers and stakeholders. Sharing such news and information from reliable websites such as media companies does increase engagement on your social media.
Obviously, people want to know about the latest developments of their concern.
At the same time, never post highly technical articles, unless you’re catering to Business-to-Business (B2B) clientele.
Because laypersons wouldn’t be able to comprehend technical jargon and your endeavor to provide the latest news or updates about a product or service could backfire seriously.
Instead, you’ll come across lots of simple and easy-to-understand content that can easily be shared on various social media platforms.
Ensure that such information is accurate and there’s no misrepresentation of facts or bloated claims in such content from third parties.
Respond Quickly to Comments
One of the best ways to increase engagement on social media is to respond quickly to comments on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts.
Usually, the person making a comment gets an alert when you respond. Curious to view your comment, they’ll visit the social media page again.
The best way to respond is with some wit and humor.
Unless of course, some disgruntled customer is making a complaint in the form of a comment. If that occurs, instantly ask the customer for further details and request them to send an email or call you after sales service staff.
This gives a superb impression and directly helps to control any damage that adverse remarks or comments may trigger.
Also use Smileys, GIFs, and stickers if necessary.
But use them judiciously.
Using too many Smileys, GIFs and stickers can actually impart a poor impression. Some common gestures that we take for granted are actually seen as offensive and insulting in some cultures.
A classic example is the thumbs up. In the US and most other countries, a thumbs-up sign signifies approval while in others it has an altogether different and offensive meaning.
Offer Prizes for Best Comments
Offer prizes for the best comments on your social media posts.
This is a sure-shot way to increase social media engagement for your business. After all, everyone seeks some sort of excitement in their daily, mundane lives.
You could provide some excitement of sorts by rewarding followers and customers that post the best comments.
These rewards could be anything from discount vouchers and codes to free samples or even some merchandise of your brand.
As a rule, never reward people that post only positive or flattering comments. In fact, such comments might arise out of the desire to win the reward or prize.
Also offer prizes to customers and followers that provide valuable feedback about flipsides of your business, brand, product, or service.
These comments, though adverse, can help you improve the business and its offerings while increasing social media engagement exponentially.
Gauge Your Social Media Reach
This is something that lots of social media marketers ignore. And that’s gauging the reach of your social media posts.
I’ve come across posts on Facebook that are very simple. They post a picture of the place where the person or company operates from. And they ask people to mention where they live.
On some such posts, I’ve seen comments from people living in distant countries and continents. And a majority of them appear genuine.
For many, this might sound like a futile exercise. Instead, finding where people that follow your social media accounts help you venture into newer markets.
Moreover, social media content creators can create customized posts for that specific audience in a distant country to engage more people.
Run Quiz Contests & Surveys
Quiz contests and surveys that are simple attract people to respond. And more so, if you’re offering some incentives or prizes for the top three winners or so.
You could conduct a survey or quiz about your own products and services or brand. Such quizzes and surveys not only increase engagement on your social media, but also provide vital feedback on how aware they’re about the business, brand, and your offerings.
Customer education is a key factor for the success of any business.
When a customer or prospect is aware of what your product or service can deliver and the reliability of your business, there’re excellent chances they’ll spread the word around and help the business grow through word of the mouth publicity.
Answers to quizzes and surveys are also read by other respondents. This enables them to know more about the product or service to derive greater benefits.
And as I mention earlier, these quizzes and surveys work to increase social media engagement too.
Post Your Jobs on Social Media
Posting ads and announcements of any job vacancies on your social media is a superb method of engaging people.
Because a lot of job seekers will also follow your social media accounts in the hope of finding a suitable vacancy. And at the same time, they can learn a lot about your business and its products or services.
You can post a vacancy through a Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest account or even use an ad on Facebook.
Generally, job Tweets get retweeted while Facebook posts are shared by followers. They’ll forward them to someone they know fits the job role.
While job posts have a limited reach since applicants would mainly be from a specific geographic zone, it does help in increasing social media engagement.
And it creates a greater following from specific areas too, where you could focus marketing efforts.
More Ways to Increase Social Media Engagement
Other than these eight top ways, here’re some other methods to increase your social media engagement.
One of them is using influencers and micro-influencers to promote your social media resources.
Another one is posting pictures and brief bios of your employees that’s excelling at work. This helps customers and stakeholders get a good impression of the business while boosting staff morale and increasing engagement.
You can also create an exclusive page for followers and customers that’s very active. Everyone wants exclusivity.
Set terms and conditions that followers and customers find easy to follow. For example, you can allow followers to add a specific number of newer members to get entry to your ‘members-only’ social media page.
And finally, don’t forget LinkedIn. Though LinkedIn isn’t really a social media channel, your posts can find lots of engagement among professionals if you create an account for your business.
Wrapping Up:
The above tips can help increase social media engagement if you exert some effort to adapt them to the needs of your business and location.
As you can see, increasing social media engagement is fairly simple, if you follow the right social media strategy.