Gone are the days when you could just pay lip service to social media marketing and expect to bring in the customers without any significant effort.
It’s the digital age, after all, and brands of all shapes and sizes can be found on Facebook, X, Instagram and the like – so competition is certainly rife and, as such, you need to be really pushing the boat out to welcome potential prospects through the virtual doors.
Real engagement is the buzzword of the moment and it’s something you need to sit up and pay close attention to, with the aim being to forge genuine connections with your target market, interacting in an authentic way with your audience.
Likes and shares simply won’t cut it these days, so if that’s where your focus currently is, you won’t see the returns you’re looking for.
To help you get to grips with real engagement, here are a couple of resources to consider leveraging over the next few months. If you don’t see a boost in clicks and conversions in the future as a result, we’ll eat our proverbial hats!
Live Q&As
Something you may have already started seeing other brands do with increasing regularity is holding live Q&A sessions with followers. This gives you real-time interaction with people, improving customer service, amplifying brand awareness, boosting engagement, increasing brand loyalty and helping to build trust.
You can use these for lead generation by offering exclusive content, deals and offers, or you can reuse old blog posts and videos in a new and exciting way to help develop brand authority.
Social media polls
If you’re short on time, running a poll is an effective way of engaging with people and they generally do quite well because they’re quick, simple and fun to take part in.
You can also use them to gain valuable insights into your target market, finding out what they like and what they don’t, and what they’re interested in so you can make better brand decisions overall.
Interactive tutorials
If you have a product that needs directions for use, you can easily engage with people in a meaningful way through interactive tutorials online.
Educational resources are invaluable evergreen content that have no shelf life, available in formats like dynamic images and videos, turning your customers into active participants through improved engagement, greater satisfaction and faster problem-solving… all of which is sure to make your brand stand out in people’s minds.
User-generated content
One of the best ways to build a loyal following and develop a sense of community under your brand umbrella is to prioritise user-generated content (UGC). This could be something as simple as asking people to send in videos of them using your products, for example, incentivised perhaps with discounts off future purchases.
Or you could ask people to guest blog for your site if they’re doing something relevant and interesting. Reviews, photos, videos and testimonials all count as UGC… so don’t be afraid to ask your customers to give a little back!
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