Our Best Tips to Engage With Your Social Media Followers Quickly and Authentically

The argument over whether your company should partake in social media ended long ago. Your target market regularly flaunts buffets on Instagram, post-holiday selfies on Facebook and live-tweets on the latest Game of Thrones episode. Social media boasts of over 2.3 billion users; you can't afford to miss out.Most companies understand the power of social media. However, many a time marketers make the critical error of likening the absolute size of their social media followers with success on social media. Social media isn't about amassing followers like brand-new baseball cards. It's about initiating and building a real rapport with your followers.

Engagement Is King

Garnering a million or more Facebook "Likes" on your business page may sound like a remarkable feat, but are your followers listening to you? Just about any company can persuade a multitude of people to follow their Facebook page, post a video or retweet a tweet if the reward is worthwhile, but most of the followers are unlikely to interact with your brand or ultimately turn into reliable, paying customers.In his book "The Beginner's Guide to Online Marketing," Neil Patel mentioned that human connections make the heart and soul of any business. The view applies to social media as it does with the face-to-face experience with your clients.Increasing social media followers don't count for much if your followers don't engage with your posts. A disengaged audience of a million doesn't compare to a well-engaged audience of 15,000.

A Short Review Of Engagement

Why is engagement so valuable? Engagement is action; action conveys interest and connection. Lacking audience engagement equals setting up a billboard on an abandoned highway.Social media engagement comes in several forms; including:

• Commenting on a post
• Liking a post
• Clicking on a link attached to a post
• Retweeting or sharing a post

Each of the actions mentioned above constitutes that person and your business. As the connections build, they augment your firm's relationship with that person, which is how engaging social media posts lead to improved:

• Customer loyalty
• Exchanges between you and the target market
• Brand visibility (via sharing posts)

DiGiorno Pizza is renowned for its peculiar, cheeky Twitter Feed; nonetheless, its audience savors its derisive tweets. This amusing dating tweet amassed 72 retweets and 166 likes; doubtless, it made DiGiorno's social media followers laugh. The company made sure it stayed on message; implying pizza is a pre-requisite to finding eternal love.

Authenticity: The Best Social Media Approach

The internet is littered with recommendations on how to enhance your firm's social media marketing strategy, but time and again the guidance comes in shape of tactics. You can dig up long lists that advise you on ways of increasing social media followers by handing out trips to equatorial beaches, why you ought to add dazzling images and ideas of cross-promoting through guest posting.All these tactics may turn out useful, beneficial but only if your approach to running your social media platforms is right. The best approach zeroes in on authenticity. According to Ilya Pozin, a Forbes writer coined it in the best way possible. Pozin claimed potential consumers and customers look for smart and comical social media accounts. Customers not only want to follow accounts that are great conversationalists but those that take an interest in their needs. Your target market is after social channels to add value to their existence in a way.Tactics can only get you so far if you fail to represent your brand convincingly and communicate in a way that makes your target audience desire to engage. Looking back at DiGorno's tweet may not come out as authentic at first, but it resonates with the cheeky personality of their brand that aims to attract the young and hip audience.Before you start on implementing the "101 Excellent Tips for Garnering more Facebook Likes," take a step back and evaluate your company's identity and how your audience perceives you. Perhaps it's time to bring out the authenticity.

How to be Authentic on Social Media

1. Determine your personality

It's impossible to speak authentically if you are unaware of your company's background and the description of your prime target market. Understand your firm's personality before jotting your next tweet and make sure all your communication displays that character.A look at the Twitter Feeds of Old Spice and Charming couldn't be more contrasting, but each reflects its company's distinctive personality. Charmin embraces mild silliness that captivates its family-friendly audience while Old Spice adopts an eccentric masculine audience.

2. Flaunt Your Personality

Once you get a grip on your social media tone, use it loud and clear. Construct creative posts coming from a place of truth. Don't shy away from coming out as a little weird, fun or wacky. Remember, you'll not post a generic billboard aimed at appeasing the world; instead, you ‘re communicating to your specific audience.When you muse over compelling companies, Staples may not pop up in your mind, however, the office supplies store knows a thing or two about having fun with its Twitter account which is filled with off-center, office-related humor, including delightful low-budget videos perfect for the office time-waster.

3. Create Captivating Conversations That Will Make Your Followers Engage

Creating engagement entails sparking conversations with, rather than talking at, your social media followers and this takes a perfect understanding of their hopes, priorities, pain points and perspectives and how your service(s) or product fits into their hectic lives.Barkbox, a dog products company is keen on forging a strong connection between dogs and humans. As you'd expect, adorable and amusing pictures of dogs are all over their Facebook page and captivating dog-related articles.A post on their Facebook page on how to dog owners can introduce their canine flurry friends to new babies garnered 20 comments, 33 shares, and 147 likes within the first hour of posting. By posting a topic relevant to its followers, Barkbox reaped great visibility via shares and possibly increased traffic to its site.

4. Respond, Respond, Respond

When your followers engage, return the favor. A dialogue is a two-way thing; don't post and scuttle. The leading corporate social media accounts react promptly to mentions, shares or comments to keep interactions going.A study revealed that 78% of users who post grievances on Twitter anticipate feedback within an hour.Perhaps no industry receives customer complaints like the airlines. Companies such as Jet Blue are well-known for addressing issues through social media.

5. Turn Online Engagement Into Sales

Instinctively, it only makes sense that we purchase from companies that we know, trust and like. It can be impossible to quantify how 12,000 views a company's YouTube video relate to its bottom line, but we see forging and strengthening relations with your audience remains invaluable. However, research is slowly clarifying this matter. Socialbakers research divulged a directly proportional relationship between a firm's social media content and website traffic.

Crank Up The Veracity

Gaining more social media followers is only one step to attaining a prosperous social media plan. Before you fixate on gimmicks and tactics, start by nailing down your firm's story and impetus. Authenticity isn't about gaining attention; instead, it's about selling your company in an authentic and captivating manner.With all the social media content you design, whether it's on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, stay true to your brand and engage genuinely and authentically with your social media followers.

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