I would be lying if I said customer engagement is easy…but these really are the ultimate social media marketing tips!
The Ultimate Social Media Marketing Tips For Customer Engagement
I bet you would like me to say customer engagement is easy, but the truth is in this world of white noise we have so many messages and distractions that can make engagement with our customers difficult to initiate. In this post I will share my ultimate social media marketing tips that even experienced marketers will find valuable.
Not a lot has really changed in marketing since Philip Kotler published his first book on Marketing in 1963. There more channels to market to our customers and data analysis is much faster.
Remember:- “Content is King but Context is God” Gary V. and many others have said this over the years and it still stands today. As he says “you need to begin by respecting the platform and respecting your audience. “
Being successful in social media marketing begins with listening before we engage. We can then create platform specific content, bearing in mind social media channels are all used very differently and by different demographics.
Some customers buy your product or service quietly without the need to engage and tell everyone about their lives! They deserve not to be bugged on social media or anywhere else. So should feature in your customer segmentation planning; people in social media marketing think everyone is ‘social’ but clearly reaching the non social customer rests within your direct mail department or telemarketing team.
Forward thinking businesses like Nike have been focusing on getting to know their customers on all channels, they have also included IoT (internet of things) and are using data to bring them closer to what their customers want! “They setup an entire new department to focus on this, called Digital Sport back in 2010, with a view to focus on sensors and integrating them into their marketing mix to bring a much better understanding of their sports users, assisting them to track their sport activities.” Nike Takes Digital Data & Social Media Marketing Seriously
Wherever you are with your marketing budget and expertise it is still crucial to analyse who your customers are and what matters to them before you build a content plan, integrated social media marketing plan and a social media policy for your staff.
Authenticity is crucial
Customers can’t stand fake people, take the time to be authentic, approachable, helpful, informative and so on, this is key.
Use analytics
Work out which content is the most popular and use the topics to create more of the same. E.g. if three of your blogs were really popular then you can write a follow up article.
Continually monitor analytics and create content that fits with the up to date news stories, people love to be first to tell the world of something important. Make the time to engage with your key influencers and share their content to your channels.
Fast response
When people do engage you need to respond in a timely fashion and in the correct professional tone for your business, building relationships from the first touch point.
Content format
People like to absorb information in different ways, so you should cater to people who like to read, watch and or listen.
Quality images
There are many tools you can use to create platform specific images and taking the time is really worth it considering.
“We have an attention span of around 8 seconds now, visuals are even more crucial than ever before.” Web Dam
“Posts that have images have 650% higher engagement than regular posts” and “84% of communication will be visual by 2018” Reuters Cisco report
“41.5% of marketers said that original graphics, such as infographics and illustrations, performed best.” In a recent study of 300 marketers by Venngage
Timing is everything
Posting content when your audience is online is a necessity, a few years ago it was much more difficult to analyse but now you can use lots of different tools to schedule content to go out at just the right times. Some more advanced tools in particular tell you when your audience is online so you can engage with them when their particular app is open.
Sharing pictures
If you are being a little lazy in your posting by using Instagram to share to Twitter or Facebook make sure you use a tool that makes the photo show up instead of a link.
“Tweets with Instagram links are 42% less likely to be Retweeted and Tweets including Facebook image links are 47% less likely to get Retweeted.” Dan Zarella.
Ideally you should be creating platform specific content…
Sharing links get much more engagement
Twitter whiz Dan Zarrella’s analysis suggests you “include links in 60-80% of your tweets as the sweet spot for Retweets.”
Running polls
Asking your audience important, relevant questions can be another way to get good engagement, if there are not too many!
Twitter chats
Running a live chat on is a great way to get engagement, just make sure you take the time to set it up properly and have a blog post to link to with questions for search engine optimisation.
Click to share buttons
If your blog has valuable, helpful, engaging content then people will want to share it so you need to make it as easy as possible and remember to thank them when they do.
Relevant hashtags
If you want more engagement you must share use relevant #hashtags.
“Tweets that contain one or more hashtags were 55% more likely to be ReTweeted than Tweets that did not.” according to Dan Zarrella, social media scientist
Correct content strategy
Whether your business has the resource to create your own content or not it is important to make sure that it fits with your audiences interests and has relevant images that they will find informative, ideally with wording.
“So often we see a (sometimes quite good) graphic, perhaps originally designed as a magazine ad, which is then used as an email, which is then tweeted, posted and this seems just like a terribly wasted opportunity.” Quote – Adam Gray, Co-Founder, Digital Leadership Associates
Competitions
Are a really great way to get engagement, for example a children’s store near where I live in Spain chained a huge blow up Gorilla outside to run a photo competition.
I do run competitions and would be happy to help if you need assistance. Alternatively you can use platforms such as Rise to build competitions yourself based on pretty much any kind of metric to encourage the behaviour you desire. You can get 10% off for the first three months here Rise just use NAT on checkout.
Enthusiastic people to manage your channels
You would not want to visit a shop regularly if the sales assistant was not knowledgable about their product and enthusiastic, polite,helpful…consistency is key with a positive friendly attitude.
Video content
Using video is fantastic for your business and is growing at a rapid rate, with over 79% of internet content being video by 2018, you cannot ignore it, just make sure that you have something truly remarkable to say if you are doing live video.
Curate quality, relevant content
Make sure that your content is good quality and tailored to your audience. Take the time to read it first! We have all seen these click bait websites which have images with headlines at the bottom of the post we read so be careful.
Amplify most popular content
Paid advertisements are really important to increase your reach on social media and in fact on Facebook in particular it has been known to increase your organic reach dramatically.
Ask people to share your content
If you ask people to share your content they are much more likely to do so, it is also important to thank them for sharing.
Automation best practices
When utilising automations you must engage personally with people who have engaged with your software. When a social media follower or fan has triggered or been sent an automated response; you should respond personally, politely and in a timely fashion to answer all their questions.
Setup your Facebook chatbot
If you haven’t done this already now would be a great time to do so, it is important to use the personalisation feature.
Fellow IBM Futurist and marketeer Garin Kilpatrick says on FB Advance, Facebook Marketing, Tips, Apps and News “These messages are like a boomerang since they send automatically as soon as someone messages you.”
Keep up with the latest tools
Sniply is one of my favourites, it creates an overlying customisable link which drives traffic back to your website from other people’s sites, this is just one of the tools that I recommend people use and it is free until you reach 1000 clicks I believe.
Use a blog comment system
Use Disquis, Facebook comments or just the original comments system on your blog and make sure you monitor for responses and engage! A useful article here by social media examiner on how to choose the correct system. Make sure you include in your GDPR Privacy policy…
Be cautious using automated curation tools
If you are using tools that curate content you need to take the time to set them up properly and make sure that you monitor their success and add new content sources to them. I have added a link to a post I wrote about my 7 Worst Twitter Automations and at the time I was not a fan…
I hope you have enjoyed my post and I would love to hear from you, please take the time to comment below or catch me on Twitter @natschooler