With the rise of social media, online engagement is more prevalent now more than ever. People are scrolling through a sea of content and advertisements every day on multiple platforms, which makes it easy for your brand’s content to get overlooked if you are not actively engaging with your audiences.
Online engagement is a major component to making money, but building lasting relationships with your consumers and audiences without the sole intention of selling can help create brand loyalty which would increase sales as well. In order to kickstart your online engagement growth, follow these simple pointers to help your company engage through any channel:
Know Your Audience
The first step to creating a flourishing online engagement strategy is to fully understand your audience. This means conducting research by frequently checking analytics on each social media platform and sending out surveys to better gauge what your audience’s preferences are.
Once you are able to know your audience on a deeper level, you will be able to personalize content and communication to your audience in a more effective way, which can elicit more comments, shares, and feedback to help boost your presence online.
Creating Relevant Content
Once you have conducted thorough research, creating relevant content to your audience or multiple audiences will help them feel a deeper connection to your brand. Telling your audiences to buy what you are selling because it is “the best” won’t help develop loyal and engaged audiences. Tailored content is the best way to form a connection to your audience.
Providing helpful advice that relates to your products or services, crafting polls, asking questions, and promoting a giveaway or contest are all great ways to help increase engagement on any social media platform.
If you’re feeling stuck on what to post about, according to Hootsuite, joining in on conversation about current events in a way that relates to your brand is a great way to create relevant content and stay up on the latest trends.
Response Time
Once consumer’s start to actively engage with your content, comments and questions will start to pop up frequently. It is incredibly important to be on top of responding to comments and messages to be aware of your brand’s perception online.
Responding to comments in a timely manner will help minimize any frustrations or concerns your consumers are having. 24 hours should be the maximum amount of time it should take to respond to comments on social media.
Automatic chatbots are also becoming an increasingly popular method of helping out consumers on websites. Utilizing this feature will encourage consumers to reach out and be open to communicating with your company directly.
Stay True to Your Brand
No matter what channel you are using, it is crucial to let your audiences know who you truly are. Having a real voice in your content and communication will let your audiences know that your brand is trustworthy and care about them further than a sale. Personalization is key when it comes to increasing engagement on any online platform.
Having a humanized voice is important, but making sure that voice lines up with your brand is just as vital. Staying true to your brand shows your audiences that you are dependable and care about your audiences further than selling a product or service.
Newsletters
Along with social media, crafting a newsletter is a great way to keep your loyal customers engaged with what’s going on with your company. However, there is a delicate balance of informing your audiences and bothering them with too many emails, so making sure you do not overdo it is something to keep in mind.
Scheduling to send out a monthly newsletter that includes ways for the recipients to engage with your company is a simple way to increase online engagement. This includes sending out surveys, google forms, and many other ways to help boost the engagement without overwhelming your audiences.
Here at Inner Spark Creative, we believe that online engagement is a fundamental practice necessary to help grow your company. We want to help you expand your online presence and content possibilities while staying true to your brand. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your business’s online presence prosper.