When it comes to digital marketing, Social media engagement is the first thing that comes up in the conversation. Interestingly, it is always an excellent choice for small businesses to use social mediums for brand promotion organically. While big enterprises can pay for marketing on social media for a balanced paid reach with organic. And, for all types and scales of businesses, social media engagement is the key to scalable growth and returns.  

Social browsers are brand-engaged, and most of them use these platforms to research products.

If you see little engagement in social media marketing, you need to pursue a high-effort game of creating evergreen and shareable content. Well, Customer Engagement is not always to sell and generate profits. Often, it is only about being well-engaging with the people. 

However, the “share my post” or “like my page” kinda approach isn’t going to be as effective as you assume. So, as a brand, you need to be as engaging as your audience would like.  

Here are a few customer engagement strategies to establish and add to people’s interest in your brand and leverage them coming back.  

Let’s dive in.

It all starts with asking right

Engaging people means you need to know about them. Give value to their opinions, and this is possible only when you ask them the right questions. 

Don’t be lackluster by asking ‘how are you doing’ or ‘what’s your email.’ It sounds too dull to continue conversation despite being popular options; these questions can turn them off. For social welfare, avoid being forceful or mighty if you want to engage someone online.   

How about provoking their sentiments? Ask for their opinion; ‘share your perspective,’ ‘what do you think’ or ‘what do you want and so forth is more of a winning strategy.

Remember, people like to be heard and endorsed.  Online marketers can cash this opportunity and prompt your target audience with the following thought-provoking activities.

Facebook and LinkedIn groups and Instagram stories are hubs of such activities and conversations for your community. See a few more examples below.

Personality quizzes

Knowledge tests

Interactive polls

Give people’s voice a medium 

To multiply your reach, turn your selected social mediums into personal expression machines. What does that mean? Give your audience the confidence to create content to express themselves. Second, encourage them to create content featuring your products and services. Third, make them feel involved in promoting whatever you do or offer through social platforms.

Remember, it’s not always about how and what sort of content you produce and at what scale. Regardless of the camera slants, background audio, stunning filters or emojis, etc., your posts could be long-lasting or self-destructing. Here, you can make the most of user-generated content – rewarding you with higher reach at lower-to-no cost. Leverage smartphone apps to invoke people to express themselves, all while promoting your brand.

Here’s how to raise your brand spirits through your audience’s self-expression.

Use of trending hashtags

 Research and hash out unique phrases relatable to your brand, driving people to click and connect with the content they feel most associated with.  Encourage people to use your brand-related hashtags in their posts, increasing your brand and Customers engagement.

#MyMintMoment from Intuit Mint contest encouraged people to upload their photos to Instagram using the #MyMintMoment hashtag to share a story about how their life goals and finances aligned.

Another example comes from Starbucks.  

Starbucks launched a Tweet-a-Coffee campaign, encouraging spontaneous gifting on Twitter, resulting in $180,000 of sales and 27,000 potential new customers as their unique advocates.

Reviews, testimonials, ratings

Ecommerce promotions through social media help you build your brand. You can have a great website with an attractive logo but still has no brand. It’s your social ratings and reviews that help transform your website into a brand and Boost customer engagement rate.

 Social media contest

 Conduct online contests for your audience, inviting them to shoot and share their original photos and videos.

It could be anything like self-expressing poetry, memorable recordings, essays, or illustrations, and so forth.  

Run advocacy programs

 Build brand advocates who are more likely to share a great experience about your products and services. Their opinions and actions positively influence the purchase decisions of a large audience. Give your employees, contributors, partners, and customers the right platform to express themselves.

#KajabiHero promoting customer advocacy at work

Personalize customer referral sharing messages

Referral programs such as “refer-a-friend” Uber used to spur massive growth by asking their advocates to complete.

Source: Uber

Incentives for customers

Play, compete and win. Use this Digital marketing Strategy for audience engagement, and you will be surprised by the output. Why so? People love satisfying their competitive spirits coupled with valuable prizes. Cash this urge of your target audience with engaging contests, as shown below.

Inspire your fans through social media contests offering valuable incentives in return to develop their bonding with your brand.  See a few examples below.

Source: ShortStack

The entry on this giveaway by pet.co.nz, partnered with different pet food providers, explains how each person can win Christmas Prize Pack, following the contest process for 12 consecutive days.

Play and Win Contest

Psychology Trivia Games and Quizzes are another way of engaging your audience. It not only helps test your knowledge but is also a fun way of brand promotion.

Example:

“WinPanda – Everyone is a Winner!” under the flagship of ‘Mathlete – Let’s Play Math’ (A Project of ArhamSoft) is an exciting quiz competition to engage students in fun-filled and productive challenges with some handsome rewards throughout the contest.

Interactive content and fun challenges like games where people love to play, compete and win. Doing this on social media means providing social gamification to provoke and satisfy the combating essence of your target audience in a positive way.  

Here, you can see thousands of people playing these games

Promote Attractive Offers

Often the conventional ways of brand promotion work great for online marketing. For instance, offering enticing deals to capture the audience’s attention and engage with them. These old-fashioned methods include,

• Membership cards
• Coupons & vouchers
• Discounts & flat sales
• Free shipping   

Reebok offers the following for customer engagement and brand promotion.  

• Order By 12/19 At 12 PM ET To Get Gifts By 12/25 With Expedited Delivery
• 50% Off Last-Minute Gifts Collection | Code: GIFT
• Take Up To 50% Off | Code: SAVEMORE
• For Each Member Purchase Made Through 12/31, We’re Donating $10 To Boys & Girls Clubs Of America

Here is another example of audience engagement through personalized eGift cards.

Facebook and Instagram Offers will also help you bring people to your brand.  

According to Fabio Molle (Founder of Funky Christmas Jumpers), “Facebook has played a key role in driving our Christmas business – I’d estimate that approximately 40% of people through our doors heard about us on Facebook. We use our Page to interact with our fans – get them voting, posting photos, having fun, and ultimately driving them to our stores online and offline.”

You can experiment with different offers and see what appeals to your target audience most.

Closing thoughts:

Craft a tremendous customer-centric strategy to entertain, inspire and delight people while strengthening your brand exposure. However, keep your social media activities simple and convincing for significant audience engagement.

Do you want to learn how to diversify your social media strategy and develop a better action plan for audience engagement? Wondering what type of content will help your company brand grow? Just book a call or drop us a message to talk to our digital marketing experts. ArhamSoft (Pvt) Ltd., a leading digital marketing agency in the town, is determined to make businesses grow.