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How to Create Social Media Engagement

Social media engagement comes from interactions with your social media account. They include reactions, follows, shares, comments, or click-thru’s. These metrics are key ways to gauge the impact of content marketing and drive long-term brand favorability.

A clever comparison by Hootsuite labels companies as either a “soap box” or “dinner party.” Soap box brands have a one-way dialogue from the brand to consumers while dinner party brands are all about engagement, especially the small conversations between guests. Dinner party brands have the best level of consumer engagement. Be a dinner party brand.

“Your followers don’t want to talk to a faceless organization. They want to talk to real people on social media. Engaging one-on-one lets them know there’s a real person behind the account, and that can really make a difference in the trust they have for your brand.”

Nick Martin, Hootsuite social engagement specialist

Dinner Party Brand Examples:

Nike created a Twitter account dedicated to customer service in English, Spanish, and French to serve multiple countries.

Netflix has different twitter accounts for regions and spotlights new content released in that region. Considering not all content is shared in multiple regions, this is a great way Netflix localizes content to increase engagement. Each account still keeps a similar tone of humor to match the overall voice of the Netflix brand.

Domino’s celebrates cultural differences through its menu offerings and social media, strengthening its international presence.

Ways to Generate Social Media Engagement

Define Your Goals

What do you want your followers to gain through their online interaction with your brand? The “dinner party” brands referenced above have different goals. Some goals to consider include:

  • Create or change brand perception (Netflix)
  • Find and/or nurture leads
  • Offer promotions (Domino’s)
  • Providing product information to move customers through the purchase funnel
  • Obtain product or campaign feedback
  • Provide customer support (Nike)

Know Your Audience to Share Valuable Content with Them

To start, spend time researching your customer’s needs and desires. Every customer has a problem. How do they use social media to solve their problems? Your audience will dictate the frequency of posts, messaging, and content to share. You just need to listen to them!

Also pay attention to topical and trending events that resonate with your customers. These will be top of mind for your customers already so they will instantly connect with your content. However, use caution to make sure the topics or trends are in the correct brand voice.

Engagement Time!

Reactive engagement includes responding to customers who direct message, comment, or mention your business.

  • Decide the circumstances you will respond and be consistent.
  • Determine the best way to pass along messages to different internal departments.
  • Define a workflow for incoming messages.

Proactive engagement involves searching for indirect comments about your brand or relevant conversations. This can be very helpful for creating buzz for a product launch or campaign. Twitter is an essential social listening tool used by brands to proactively influence brand perception.

  • Determine guidelines for engaging with opportunities.
  • Look at Netflix or other best practices to learn about proactive engagement.

Track Your Progress

Each platform has different metrics that can be used to track audience engagement. As you get started, establish benchmarks for each platform to measure your content’s impact. This will ensure brand messaging is tied to something more tangible and constantly improving in quality.

3 replies on “How to Create Social Media Engagement”

There are a few brands, such as Billie, that continuously advertise on my Facebook feed and respond to almost ever customer’s comments. Their responsiveness actually drew me in and I bought their product. I wonder if “dinner box” advertising draws more customers, or if there are different market segments for “dinner box” and “soap box” advertising.

That is a great point! One of our examples, Nike, has both a twitter that acts as a customer service platform (dinner box) and another twitter for their general brand which much less 1-1 communication (soap box). The best takeaway is to make sure your brand does have a platform to be a dinner box even if that isn’t the only box it has.

Social media engagement is very important to increase your audience. While building a good relationship with your customer leads to increase your business sale as well as increase loyalty toward your brand. With the help of social media posts, you can get connected with your customer and provide the details about your product. Your business will gain genuine customers also boost the sale.

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