While social media used to be a choice, it’s now almost a necessity for brands looking to connect with consumers in an increasingly digital world. Smart brands are using community engagement on social channels to boost awareness, strengthen brand loyalty and drive sales. So how can you unite your followers and grow your online presence?
Here are some useful tips and tricks:
Get Clever with Recurring Prompts
Social media marketing is all about giving people a reason to visit your channels. Recurring weekly posts based around alliteration are fun, interactive and will encourage followers to habitually check your pages regularly. Ideas for recurring prompts include:
- #MotivationMonday – inspire, direct, educate.
- #ThinkOutsidetheBoxTuesday – set follower or brand challenges, post corporate responsibility initiatives that are exciting and thought provoking.
- #WinWednesday – host a competition, send out freebies.
- #ThoughtfulThursday – do a good deed, tell a brand story.
- #FunFriday – create a quiz, run a poll, post a silly meme, do a staff challenge.
This type of recurring marketing reminds members to visit your community. So if you’re going to do this, pick a day and be consistent to keep people interested. If you’re going to do this over the weekend with a #SaturdaSocial takeover or a special deal, make sure you’re organised and schedule content if you’re not going to be at your desk.
Initiate Conversations
One-sided conversations are boring. No-one wants to listen for hours as someone rattles on and on about themselves. So remember this when it comes to marketing. Instead of constantly posting about your brand and being overly self-indulgent, try to engage your followers by initiating conversations. You could even contact those who provide the best responses and ask them to expand their views into a guest blog. A snippet of this blog can then be used to spark another conversation and so the pattern continues. A good way to get people talking is to ask a question about a particular topic relevant to your brand.
Top tip for marketers: Acknowledge follower replies by tagging people in posts. Being mentioned by a brand can help drive loyalty while encouraging others to contribute.
Tailor Content to your Community Type
As a brand looking to nail social media marketing, it’s really important to be in touch with the type of community you have. While fashion lovers might want content and discussions about 2021 trends or digital shopping tips, online gamers are probably looking for hints and hacks that’ll take them to next level awesomeness. Be useful to your community and you should find them coming back for more.
Offer Exclusive Opportunities
One of the best ways to build a rock solid community is to offer channel-exclusive content available from your brand only. This could be an influencer takeover, a webinar, a daily roundup of financial news for traders – or anything relevant to your industry that’ll get people excited. Perhaps you’ve an e-book only accessible to those who like and follow a specific post? The more creative you are, the better.
If you’re looking for a digital agency in Kent to help with everything from social media marketing to web design, contact Whitefish Marketing today. As SEO Kent experts, you can enjoy tailored services that’ll help your business flourish.
