Natural sharing platforms like Twitter and Facebook make it easy for your customers and audience to engage with your brand. The thing is, audiences are smart, yes they are open to your marketing but, not so much to your blatant selling.
You need to get creative with your social media marketing, in order to stand out and make waves (without paying for your content to do so). Use the following 7 creative ways to increase community engagement and you’ll be on your way to a smart social strategy for your brand.
1. Use images - tell a story
Here’s a staggering fact for you, image posts on Facebook get 179% more interaction than other posts. If that isn’t a reason to ALWAYS use an image, we’re not sure what is!
Go further and focus your images on telling a story. How someone used a product, to a reaction to a product, to an event timeline with a product. The options are endless and the more creative and emotionally focused your image is, the more your community will engage with your post.
2. Share success stories from your customers
Customers, trust other customers opinions and experiences. You should be encouraging your customers to leave reviews and success stories from their experiences with your products. Turn these successes into a shareable moment. Your customers get highlighted through your social media (which they love) and your potential customers get a peek at how ‘real people’ use your product.
3. Use your like and share features to answer a question
This is a great little trick that works with an engaged audience. Pose a question and challenge your audience to like the post or on the other hand share the post if their answer is yes or no, a or b.
4. Head for the emotions - Make them smile, make them laugh
It’s not always about selling. Sometimes your customers need something to brighten their day, and why can’t it be a post from your business. Video’s, visual shareables or even an inspirational quote help humanize your brand experience and put a smile on your customers face. This type of post is great for both the attract and delight phase of inbound marketing, attract customers with engaging content and delight your promoters with clickable and shareable content.
5. Show every side of your business
In other words be transparent. Yes, your customers are there for your products but, by sharing the inner workings of your business your customers will get to know the people behind the products. Seeing the faces behind the business can create a personal connection with your customers and will help to humanize your business.
6. Ask your audience for help
It could be for anything, help populating a blog post, or a research project, general feedback or something they’d like to see from you in the future from you. It’s a great way to give your customers the feeling that they matter to the shape of your brand to come. Don’t forget to say thank-you!
7. Put out a quiz or hold a contest
Contests are a GREAT way to encourage community engagement, as long as the prize is relevant to your audience (and potential new audience). You can go a step further and make the contest interactive, a great suggestion is asking your audience to posts photo’s of themselves with your product, in order to gain entry.
If you don’t want to give anything a way, a quick quiz or guessing game is another great way to stir up a fury of customer engagement. You can post a photo and ask your customers to guess where it was taken or post a quote (in line with your industry) and ask users to pinpoint it’s writer.
Or follow the buzzfeed quiz trend and create a fun and interesting quiz with great answers that your users are going to want to share.
If these seven great ideas didn't hit the spot, trust the experts at Hughes & Co. to create an engaging social media feed that'll turn followers into leads and leads into loyal customers. Get started by booking a free consultation with Krystyn to learn more.