How to Build a Social Strategy To Drive Engagement for your Business

Introduction

Actively driving engagement can be a challenge, though, since, in today’s social media landscape, any company that relies on one channel for marketing is going to fail.

It’s how you combine these tools that will help improve your social strategy and make it more effective for your business.

This article will cover some best practices from that experience and offer some tips in general on how to be more engaging with your audience across all channels. 

Best Strategies and Practices to Adopt for Driving Engagement:

1. Engage with the community

You’ve chosen to use social media as a way to expand your reach and engage with your customers. You need to remember that you don’t have to wait for people to ask you questions or start using your hashtag (the hashtags used on Twitter can be an excellent idea for this) if that’s not something they do yet.

Use Twitter, Facebook, and other relevant platforms as ways to interact with the community without making it seem like you are looking for input.

Responding promptly and consistently helps build relationships on these channels. Videos, in particular, will help you engage with those watching videos in your community while there and encourage them to interact with the video content.

2. Integrate your channels into one unified voice

It’s essential to use one identity across all your different engagement channels, whether that’s your website brand or Twitter account, Facebook page (or business page), or Google+ profile.

Your brand should speak in one clear voice, communicating the same thoughts and ideas across all your channels on social media.

3. Research the best practices

Know your audience. What do they care about, how to find them, etc.

Learn the answers to these questions before you start building any social strategy for your business:

• Where do my customers and fans hang out?
• What social sites are most popular with my target market?
• Who follows who, and how does that change over time?
• What are the common hashtags for each social media platform?
• What is a good time of day/week to be active across all channels?

And as for why do you need to know your audience, here are some reasons:

• Better understanding the audience will help you create a strategy around their needs and goals.
• You can find your target audience better and more effectively.
• You can narrow down the audience demographics.

Therefore, it’s always essential to know who your audience is and what is driving their decision-making in relation to your business.

4. Keep it consistent

You want to build a steady stream of content on the social platforms where your audience hangs out, including when you’re not actively marketing.

As much as possible, try not to post at different times of the day on one channel vs. another. If you share links frequently, post them at roughly the same time every day across your channels – but make it an exact time of the day; don’t post regularly at odd hours.

5. Keep up with trends on your preferred channels and leverage the useful ones

For better interactions with your audience, you need to be aware of new features on every social media platform where you have a presence and if they’re something you want to be involved in. 

You don’t want to develop a Facebook strategy and stop posting for a few months because you got too busy with other things.

Take Facebook stories as an example; they’re a great way to keep people engaged. They are similar to Instagram stories. While they are not meant to replace other mediums, they’re a powerful tool for interacting with the community and encouraging interaction.

Having said that, they shouldn’t be the main staple for your business’ Facebook page unless you are brilliant about using and engaging with the community through that feature.

As for Twitter, you can use polls as a way to gauge audience interest, especially when you’re considering future content. 

6. Offer value

It would help if you always thought and talked about what your customers want, what they need, and how you can better serve them.

Think of yourself as a customer. Asking questions like “What’s on your mind?” and “What is an issue you are facing?” are good ways to start a conversation on any social media platform.

7. Make it personal

Instead of simply posting something, let your customers know that you care about their ideas and problems.

Include links to content from your customers in a timely fashion so that they can grow more familiar with the customer service or product you offer them.

Potential customers want to interact with someone, not just a brand or product. Do not just post your everyday sales or new product information. That might be considered helpful on Twitter but not on Facebook or Instagram.

8. Establish yourself as a trustworthy and authoritative source

People want to know who they are dealing with.

9. React appropriately

Be timely in responding and engaging with communities on social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

Being responsive will help keep the conversation going between those who follow you on various networks and those who do not.

Conclusion

The way your business uses social media does not have to be complicated. By following the tips laid out in this article, your business can have a significant social media presence.