Social media and online marketing are two of the most important aspects of your business’s over-arching marketing strategy. One is, of course, a derivative or sub-category of the other, but despite this, it’s one of the more prominent areas of online marketing as a whole and must be treated as such when designing and planning your company’s outlook.
Social media marketing is a great way to increase your business’s sales as its goal is to improve overall brand awareness. Getting seen is the first and perhaps the most important step in selling something or creating a client relationship because without eyes, you’d get nowhere.
One of the most important aspects of your social media marketing strategy, and a good measure as to whether or not it is effective at reaching its intended audience and goals, is the degree to which your followers are engaging with your brand or business and its content. There are several social media engagement strategies that can be implemented right away, with a little work up-front, to help increase your business’s sales.
2 Big Strategies That Can Be Implemented To Increase Social Media Engagement
Many businesses like to adopt niche or somewhat unorthodox strategies to pursue growth and interaction on social media. Some may be ideas you haven’t thought of before, but that can be a good thing…you don’t always want to go the conventional route.
One of those concepts is trying a mascot marketing strategy for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, or other social media platforms that are video friendly, with Tiktok probably being the most suitable of the few. There’s just something about having a representative figure with a lot of energy and antics that entices people to watch. Maybe it’s just because consumers are used to mascots providing entertainment, maybe it’s because they’re engaging, but hey, that’s exactly what you want.
You can implement this by designing a company mascot that you feel represents your brand accurately, and in a not-so-serious manner that brings a lighthearted approach to business. Encourage people to stop by and take pictures or make content on Tiktok with your mascot, and start a hashtag on different platforms so customers can see it all. This is getting at the core of engagement, this is UGC.
User Generated Content, A Must
User-generated content is paramount when it comes to engagement. Your social media page isn’t supposed to be a one-sided lecture where you just post business-related content and a few people like it because it’s rather mundane. Create a community with your clients, encourage and give them reasons to make posts about your brand, and this will go a long way.
As mentioned previously, start a hashtag. Anyone can create a hashtag of their own, and when others start to use it, it grows. If you have a hashtag unique to your business, you’ve essentially just created a personal library of content on any social media platform related to your business. For free.
- Start a contest. Promote a giveaway and encourage people to share it, prompting them to click on a link that takes viewers to your website to enter. Not only did you just generate some UGC, but you also notched some website traffic and new eyes becoming aware of your business.
- Create a group. Making a group for those interested in your business’s niche or topics related to it can be a great way to get the conversation going, and ultimately end up getting more eyes on your company. Create incentives for joining, have debates, and post a poll. There are many ways to make this work for you.
- Have an event. Events are a great way to market your business indirectly, especially when they’re promoted on social media properly and enabled to catch some traction along the way. The event doesn’t have to be a sale or about your services or product, sure these things can be subtly integrated, but it can be more about building brand awareness and creating new relationships.
This is essentially the marketing version of making your money work for you. Invest in quality content and a solid marketing strategy that induces conversation and prompts others to chime in, making their own posts about a topic of discussion or perhaps an event you’re organizing. You formulate the strategy and initiate the conversation. If done well, it will work for you.
Ultimately, Just Get It Rolling
Engagement is a bit like a fire in the sense that, once it gets going, it’s hard to stop. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, especially when it grows rather large, right? The same laws of physics can be applied to trends in generating engagement. Starting is most of the work, and once you’ve established your strategy and begun to implement it, your business is well on its way.
