Anybody can get a social media account and start a Facebook or Instagram page.
That part is easy.
Merely having a presence on social media channels however isn’t enough. It isn’t going to get you sales. Having an engaging presence is what gets you sales.
Increasing social media engagement is more than posting content or having a social media page.
These are difficult times for all small businesses. With a pandemic on the loose, most people are inside their homes, fearing for their lives. Fear and panic is rampant. And no one knows how long it will last.
And small businesses are bearing the brunt.
But I am sure just like everything before, the world will turn a new leaf.
Here are several tips to increase your social media engagement online and generate sales for your online business.
Talk about relevant topics- not the brand alone
In many social media posts from brands, what I’ve seen is an overwhelming expression of the brand’s self. To a casual observer— it comes across as shameless bragging. Their company, their goods and so on. It’s important to shift the focus away from goods and sales and talk about other things that people are interested to know. Instead talk about topics that interest your followers. How to find those topics?
Join relevant groups to get the pulse around content that’s popular in your niche.
Post creative content
To be number 1 on social media, follow the simple rule of sharing content that people find to be interesting, relevant and worth engaging with.
Creative content sometimes means experimenting with new content formats. In a captions study by Planable it was seen that including emojis in content results in higher engagement.
To improve social engagement here are several things you can do. Conduct a poll, tag some followers in a video that they can find engaging and relate with, post memes or user generated content that compels people to tag friends. Lead with product led content—anything that ties back to your core niche or products. That’s how you use content marketing to grow your brand.
These are quite a few different ways in which you can do product based promotion attracting the right people. For instance this post on office phone systems is a showdown between competing products. Everyone has a favorite and such posts can inspire a lot of back and forth on social media as people bat for their favorites.
Post something that inspires others, is funny or that which people can relate with. This helps your lead generation efforts too.
Respond to all comments
To improve social media engagement being social is the key.
Customers want to interact with you. They leave comments or messages. It doesn’t matter if the comments made publicly show your brand in good or bad light. It’s professional courtesy to reply. Show appreciation for what they do by responding to positive messages. Suggest solutions when there’s some negativity around. By responding to and reading comments you also get to know what’s wrong with your product and this gives you a chance to improve things. When writing an article on my blog, I research a lot on social media first. This gives me perspective. I go through comments on existing products and product promotions to fashion my article.
Encourage action from readers
With posts, always add a call to action at the bottom. So many social media posts, and so few calls to action. With a CTA, you encourage people to like, comment, share, retweet or re post the content. If you want to improve lead generation this is the best place to include a CTA.
Start a Facebook group
With Facebook groups you have access to a “traffic mine” that increases the amount of social media engagement you’re generating. Encourage members of the group to feel free to post content anytime.
Have a group where people communicate with each other. With this, you will broaden the scope of them getting to know each other and build brand rapport.
Be active in your community and don’t let spammers take control of the group to post whatever they want.
Moderate posts within the community whenever you get a chance.
Run contests and giveaways
One of the most popular ways to get overflowing social engagement is to run contests. Ask people to submit emails or tag friends as participation rules. You can use one among hundreds of tools to post contests. Rafflecopter is one and there are many others that are getting more and more popular.
Remember contest participation is as good as the prize you give.
Use images in every post
You can’t do anything on social media without visual content. Images are easy to post. A Buffer research points out that posts with images get 150% more retweets than posts that include zero images. Add relevante images to get relevant action
Conclusion
Social media is about being social. Responding to every customer post that doesn’t just directly address the brand but perhaps mentions it through a specific hashtag is great for ensuring each customer feels like they are valued by the business. Use social media tools to track mentions and respond. This makes them feel that they are connected to the brand.
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