Why Does Social Media Engagement Matter?

Most businesses set up a Facebook page and hope for the best, but what if this could work? What if your business' page could bring more traffic and engagement than you ever thought possible?

Social media engagement matters because when people follow and share your content, it shows social proof. A customer may leave a comment or review praising your products or customer service, which shows anyone visiting your page that they can be confident giving you business.

Encouraging your audience to engage is one thing, but it has to be organic and thoughtful, matching your brand's tone and voice. One more thing, and probably the most important of all, you also have to capture your audience's attention genuinely. There are some techniques to get started, but engagement requires some research and marketing strategy.

Why Social Media Engagement is Necessary for Your Business‍

Whether you are currently on social media or haven't looked at your Facebook page since 2016, you probably have thought: does social media engagement matter? The truth is that it does. You can do so much with social media, and there are so many channels with millions or billions of users.

Did you know that you can set up the following on your social media?

1. Facebook event calendar that notifies followers and their friends
2. Instagram posts with tags that link to products
3. Social media contests with or without mobile-responsive forms
4. Conversion tracking and audience insights for customer data
5. Show a discount to followers, their friends, and lookalike audiences
6. Create a targeted audience campaign based on location, interests, and other customer data

There are so many ways that you can engage with your audience on social media. Although there are countless ways to engage, here are a few to get you started.

‍1. Promote Social Media to Current Customers‍

The best place to begin cultivating engagement is with your current customers. Whether you put up cards at the cash register in-store or you send a drip campaign to your email list, your existing customers should know about your Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also add events, posts about daily specials, and pictures of menu items to all of your social media to help your current customers get more engaged.

2. Encourage User-Generated Content‍

When you have a physical store, you should encourage customers to take photos. Perhaps you set up an area in the waiting room with historical photos, art pieces, or a unique chair designed for photo ops! The ideas are endless, but engagement starts with a plan.

Also, social media contests, giveaways, and brand hashtags provide more opportunities and motivation for your audience to share.

3. Seek Out Your Fans and Engage‍

One thing businesses can do any day of the week is to search their brand, branded hashtags, and tagged locations. You should engage with any posts that you find on social media, especially when a customer is showing how much they love your brand already. Tools like Social Mention and SocialReport.com can help you find all of these mentions, as well as the good and the bad.

When you find brand mentions across the web, it's essential to acknowledge and comment, expressing how much you love the customer's content. If it's a negative comment or review, you simply need to reply and offer a solution, bringing the conversation private by providing a phone number or email to contact you by.

4. Post Your Best Promotions with Fire Creatives‍

The creative makes the promotion. If you consistently post images with lots of text and bright colors, it's not going to work. Creatives have to match what your audience is looking for as well as what they feel about a product. What problem are you trying to solve? Your promotion should jump out at your audience as THE solution they need now.

Also, use data to your advantage with promotions. How much engagement did you get on past posts with products? Which product pages get the most traffic? What are your audiences responding to? Offering a discount on these products may draw the most attention, or even a BOGO creative featuring several top products could work best with online shoppers on social media.

When in doubt, the language of free always helps a post get attention, just make sure that it's something your audience craves to see.

5. Fix Online Reputation Issues Fast‍

When you google your brand or look at reviews on social media? What do you see? If your brand doesn't have good reviews or ANY reviews, it's time to start providing better customer service, and then send follow-up emails to ask for those reviews. When asking for reviews, do not offer any incentives to write reviews because doing so will violate most channels' terms of use policies. Violating these policies could get your social channel turned off, or worse yet, get you banned from the platform.

Instead of incentives, just remind your customers that reviews help your business and that you'd love to hear from them. And, if your brand has excellent products and service, there shouldn't be anything unfavorable to post about. In anticipation of a new wave of reviews coming your way, you should create a review response library to answer those questions that are frequently asked in comments to mitigate negative reviews.

Wrapping Up: So, What's Your Next Move on Social Media Going to Be? ‍

Even 10 minutes a day on social media can improve your social engagement. Need help? Not sure how your business is performing online? Get the free marketing report that will show you how your business stacks up against the competition so you can dominate online.