Social media has truly revolutionised the world of communication. It has enabled businesses of all sizes to reach a global audience in a matter of few clicks. Today, it has become crucial for businesses to maintain a strong presence on social media in order to thrive.
User engagement is one of the core metrics to measure a business’s online success. Besides that, connecting with customers has become necessary to break through the overwhelming amount of social media ads users come across every day. This post explores powerful customer engagement-building strategies and the significance of engagement for businesses.
Here are some strategies you can employ to build customer engagement on your socials.
Stimulating user-generated content has remained one of the most powerful ways to build engagement to date. It has plenty of other advantages besides engagement which include a significant organic reach, authenticity, trust, credibility, and an increase in TikTok followers along with other social networks.
The thing about UGC is that it is created voluntarily by the audience. So it’s considered more authentic and trustworthy by potential customers. Moreover, it boosts your organic reach to a great extent without having to put in much effort and resources.
Most social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have a feature called stories where the content shared remains visible for 24 hours. It could be text, videos, images, or reshares of posts and stories. Different platforms have introduced fun features that users can add to their stories. For example, Instagram offers GIFs, question stickers, polls, quizzes, emoji slider stickers, different fonts, and so much more to make stories fun.
Businesses can use the stories feature to interact with their audience, gain valuable feedback, and build stronger relationships with them. Integrating various fun elements and sharing glimpses of behind-the-scenes are great ideas to start with.
When someone tags your brand name in their content and it sounds positive, do not miss out on the opportunity to share it with your audience. Repost the mentions in your stories, feature them in a highlight or dedicate a section of your website to positive consumer feedback. This builds your credibility and authenticity in the eyes of your online audience and attracts potential leads.
Apart from offering advantages to the business, it’s also a great way to make your audience feel valued and enhance your Facebook followers. When the audience feels appreciated, they are more likely to engage with your content and become loyal fans.
Most businesses underestimate the power of responding to their audience in the inbox as well as the comments section. This act might seem like a trivial thing but it goes a long way in building customer engagement. It’s a way to make them feel heard and let them know that their words matter to you. Even with the negative comments, stay light-hearted and try to respond in a way that isn’t offensive.
Actively engaging with your audience on social media networks has also been said to increase revenue as people prefer to buy from businesses that demonstrate good communication skills.
When you run a business, people definitely have concerns, questions, and issues regarding the products and services. As a business, it’s your responsibility to answer queries, address any issues, and resolve them. This enhances customer satisfaction and encourages engagement on the content as well.
Good customer service promises plenty of benefits which include a positive brand image, a good reputation, an increased chance of acquiring new customers, and it helps build a loyal customer base.
Go live on your official business account to interact with your followers often. There are so many things you can talk about. Have a light chit-chat with coffee. Show them around your workspace. Introduce your team. Talk about upcoming projects that you are working on. Read out the comments aloud and respond to them live. Answer frequently asked questions.
Going live every now and then builds engagement and anticipation in your audience. When it becomes a ritual, they will wait for the live session to begin. It’s a great way to get to know your audience and gain more Youtube subscribers.
Brand storytelling is a powerful way to enrapture your audience and connect with them on an emotional level. There are several types of stories you can share with your audience, such as:
Sharing stories about the various aspects of business allows its audience to humanise the brand and think of it beyond an entity that merely sells goods. Stories create empathy within them and create a sense of belonging in the audience. So they are more likely to buy from a brand where they feel connected rather than a place where they are offered little to no value.
Social media has significantly impacted business communications. It’s no more about disseminating promotional messages to a mass audience like traditional advertising. Consumers have grown wiser too and they don’t easily interact with advertising messages anymore. Businesses have to think of creative ways to gain consumer attention.
Content plays a key role in social media marketing. Instead of putting all effort into crafting promotional messages, businesses should focus on providing value and entertainment through their content. It could be through creating relevant memes, participating in viral trends and challenges, how-tos, informational videos and infographics about the product; how to store it, use it, and make it last longer, etc.
The last but definitely not the least point in encouraging customer engagement has to be to stay authentic in your communication and interaction on social media. Users tend to engage more with content that reflects transparency and authenticity as compared to content that is built on pretence. Genuine content is easy to relate to for the audience, thus they are more likely to show interaction with it.
Customer engagement is one of the core phenomena of operating a business on social media. It harvests plenty of benefits for a business, which are as follows.
A business profile on social media where the customers are highly engaged propagates a positive brand image to the visitors and potential customers. It’s not just about enhancing your tiktok likes, it’s also about delivering what you promise that helps build a positive image of your brand.
When you openly communicate and interact with your customers, it harbours trust within them. The trust factor is enough to dominate every other element. It is the core component in building loyal customers who recommend your brands to others and help build your brand reputation. When you are just starting out on social media, it might be hard to gain people’s trust instantly. So you can get various engagement components such as followers, likes, and comments on your socials through platforms such as FollowersCart to establish your credibility.
Social media has made it pretty convenient for businesses to improve customer satisfaction by actively engaging with them. When customers get in touch with the business to ask questions or get support, your job is to hear them out, address their concerns, and answer their queries in a professional way.
Customer engagement builds a loyal following as well as a loyal customer base. This goes a long way in turning those customers into brand advocates. Word of mouth is the most powerful way to influence people. These people are the ones who will promote your brand to their peers and curate a positive brand image too.
Building on customer engagement, businesses can go on to develop a strongly-knit community of people who share common interests. Developing a sense of community within the audience keeps them bonded to the brand as well.
People who feel valued and appreciated by a business are more likely to come back again and again to avail of their services. Engagement is one of the key factors in retaining customers and fostering loyalty within them.
Social media interactions between a business and its customers allow them to think of the brand in a humanised way. They consider the interactions beyond the idea of monetary exchange and develop a sense of belonging to the brand.
Believe it or not, building customer engagement goes as far as to increase the revenue the business is able to generate. Here’s how it works. When you engage with your customers actively, it not only enhances your Instagram followers, it builds loyal and satisfied customers who become brand advocates. Positive word-of-mouth communication from them brings in new customers and the cycle continues. This results in increased revenue for the business.
Customer engagement lies at the core of social media marketing. There are a myriad of ways discussed in this article to build engagement. It reaps a lot of benefits for business, monetary and non-monetary. If you want to boost your sales or revenue through social media, actively engaging with your customers is the short answer to your struggles.
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