Content marketing is one of the best ways to reach out to your potential customers across the globe. Apart from generating leads, engagement is also a good way to gauge how well your content marketing strategy is faring. Engagement is a good way of increasing brand awareness. Remember, branding is all about building trust and engagement.
However, a good number of entrepreneurs are still struggling to figure out the whole engagement phenomena. In fact, only one in every four businesses feels confident with their engagement techniques according to a report by Thunderbolt. To get ahead of the competition, here is what you need to know about engagement.
Social media engagement- What is it?
It is the way you interact with your customers online. It’s about the likes, comments, retweets, reactions, shares, and reactions to the content you share on your social media platforms. Engagement depends on how well you communicate with your clients. It’s about learning their interests, sharing solutions to problems and offering value through the content you share.
Why do businesses need social media engagement?
Engagement is not only about the likes and comments on a Facebook post or tweet. It’s a great way to increase brand awareness. Once people like your content, they will automatically recommend it to their peers or share it to their followers consequently increasing your brand awareness.
Dollar Shave Club made a funny commercial in 2012 that went viral accumulating likes, comments, and shares in the millions. The video ended up garnering more than 25 million views across various social media platforms. They were able to share their brand message and at the same time entertain their potential customers. As of Feb 2017, Dollar Shave Club had a market share of 47% beating Gillette who have been dominating the market for quite a long time.
How can you increase engagement?
According to the Sprout Social Q2 2016 Index, Social media is the most preferred channel for customers to engage with their favorite brand. People are no longer interested in making calls or writing emails to inquire about a certain product, they want instant feedback, and social media turns out to be the best. On average, 42% of customers expect a response to their inquiry within an hour on social platforms.
It’s easy to understand why social media is the best engagement tool; there are nearly 2.6 billion active mobile social users according to Statista. This number is projected to increase as mobile penetration increases.
Social media engagement can be a gratifying endeavor yet very simple. It’s all about knowing what your customers want and sending it to them right on time. Offer excellent customer service by answering queries on time, provide solutions to common problems in your industry, offer entertainment, share compelling data or dive into trending topics such as the Super Bowl.
For your customers to interact, they need to find something interesting in your content before clicking. In this regard, try to inspire a certain reaction to your messages. Interestingly, 51.3 percent of respondents from a 2016 survey by Statista said they follow specific brands because their content is entertaining.
How do you measure engagement?
There are various tools that you can use to measure engagement, so are the KPIs involved. According to Buffer, it’s only wise to categorize the KPIs into six main steps of the customer’s journey which are…
● Activity: The productivity of your social experts
● Reach: Your clients and potential customers
● Engagement: Interactions and reactions to your content
● Acquisition: Initiating a relationship
● Conversion: Actions taken by visitors
● Retention and Advocacy: Satisfied customers who want to share their experience with your brand
Customer engagement is important in every business as customers want to get value for their hard-earned money. You also don’t want to lose customers because you overlooked replying to their comments on Facebook or Twitter.