How to Engage Customers on Social Media

In the past, giant multinational companies had a sweeping monopoly in their respective industry. Part of the reason was that they had an enormous budget to spend on marketing. As a result, small startups didn’t stand a chance to compete with them. However, the table has been dramatically turned with the inception of social media. 

Group of Hands Holding Speech Bubble Concept

Today, an organization does not need out-of-proportion resources to stand out from the crowd and catch a public glare. All you need is a well-crafted social media strategy to engage a fair proportion of the audience. 

Presently, social media has penetrated the life of about more than 2 billion people across the globe. That’s a staggering number, to say the least. But don’t assume that just being available on social media will readily attract the people. You must tick the following boxes in order to take the customer engagement to the next level:   

1. Know your audience

It has been commonly witnessed that brands get so busy speaking on social media that they barely lend an ear to what their customers are saying. More often than not, this proves to be the tipping point of their downfall. 

Therefore, knowing your audience is the foremost piece of the puzzle you have to solve. Because no matter how captivating your content maybe, if it does not align with your customer’s pain points, desires, financial standing, etc., it is all set to go down the drain. 

In this day and age, coming to terms with your consumers is a cakewalk. You just have to dive into your social media analytics, and that’s about it. If you have just stepped into the industry, then stalking the social profiles of your rivals will get the job done quite comprehensively. 

2. Share balanced content

Of course, the whole point of creating a social media account is to promote yourself. But that should not be your only goal. As time progresses, social media audience is becoming increasingly indifferent to the brands that have to nothing valuable to say except breathlessly bragging about their products and services. 

By any stretch of the imagination, we don’t undermine the importance of promotional content. It is indeed a potent tool to earn much-needed recognition. But it is equally important to finding the right balance by sharing other types of content, including funny, informative, facts and figures in the form of an infographic, and so on.  

Creating quality content is a time-consuming activity. So instead of keeping your followers starved for a long time, you should consider sharing other’s content on your timeline.

Better still, work with the close cooperation of a social influencer who also happens to be a known face of your niche. Once you have got diverse content at your disposal, you can schedule it at various timings using a social media scheduler.

3. Respond to the queries in a timely fashion

It is the story of the bygone era when customers would get their queries resolved through emails or telephone calls. These mediums have pretty much outlived their utility with regard to customer service. Today, an overwhelming majority of people would get in touch with a brand on social media whenever they have something to ask. 

This tendency can work for you as low-hanging fruit. Because just by responding to people in a timely manner you can significantly boost the engagement rate. The time-frame of replies largely depends on the specific social media network. 

For example, in accordance with credible statistics, Facebook users expect brands to get back to them within the slot of 24 hours while twitter audience wants the answer of their questions within a mere 2 hours.  

There are many brands out there who have limited members in their social media teams. The odds are, they may find it difficult to provide such fastpaced customer service and eventually make peace with poor engagement rates. In that case, you are recommended to walk the tight line of the following instructions: 

  • Users will toss up similar questions to you frequently. Instead of writing them over and over again, you can save time by having their answers prewritten. 
  • Keep the list of keyboard shortcuts in front of you. It will speed up the response time.
  • Divide the workload so that two people from your team don’t waste time addressing the same question.   

4. Be human

Traditionally speaking, marketers have always put emphasis on communicating with customers in a professional way. While this trend is very much alive and kicking, today many brands are inclined to show their human side to the customers once in a while. 

Of late, almost all the well-known companies have fallen head over heels in love with this tactic because it is being astonishingly well-received among the public. More so, among the younger generation because they don’t really subscribe to formal tone, unlike their forefathers.  

The point being, sometimes it is good to take a break from hardcore corporate language and let the public know you are a human just like them. There are quite a few ways to convey that image. For example, engage in a comical conversation with someone or simply share your behind the scene moments. You will be amazed to see the appetite of social media for such type of content. Just do it and see your engagement ratio going through the roof.  

5. Host a contest

Hosting a contest has never gone out of fashion. People always make it a point to participate as long as the prize is really worth it. These days a lot of brands are taking the initiative to distribute expensive giveaways, such as a high-ended smartphone phone or tablet. However, you don’t have to offer a materialistic product for every contest. Sharing the name of the winner by tagging his profile is an equally good reward. 

Make sure your contest is based on visuals. For example, ask followers to share a candid picture wearing your brand’s t-shirt. Since social media users are quite open when it comes to sharing pictures, a visual contest typically drives more engagement than a plan question-oriented contest.    

The final verdict 

As it is evident from the above discussion, engaging people on social media is not a tough nut to crack. Just sticking to the basics will do the job. Of course, things won’t change overnight. So being resilient holds the key. 

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