17 Effective Ways to Engage Your Customers on Social Media

Everyone is using social media in one way or another. People are using it to entertain, find products, or read reviews. Brands are using it to increase brand awareness, build trust, and generate solid leads.

It’s not a question of which social media platform is best suited for you. It’s about going out there and trying out every social media platform. You never know which platform your audience is using.

Social media is your gateway to success. With just a little effort and consistency, you can build a robust reputation for your brand online.

But ensure that whatever you do on social media will be right in front of the eyes of your customer or potential client. You need to maintain a balance between being professional and being personal.

You need to act like a human and let them feel that you are there. Listen to them and help them with whatever they need.

In this blog, you’ll get tips on social media engagement so that you can grab the attention of your audience in no time. You cannot ignore the impact that social media can have on your business and your audience.

1. Initiate Conversation with followers

The consumer of today is smart. They just don’t want a brand that focuses on their products and their services all the time. People want someone somewhat human. A brand that can listen to them, make them laugh, and solve their problems like a normal human.

When brands start engaging with their followers, it gives a feeling of trustworthiness and ease to them.

A smart way to do this is to start the conversation first. When a brand initiates a conversation, often the followers engage and share their stories with the world, creating a sense of urgency for everyone else to share and express their experiences.

If you are a football fan, you might have noticed how Manchester United engages its followers on Twitter. They are always the first to start the conversation, making people take the conversation forward.

2. Stay relevant to current events

When brands start sharing event-related posts with their followers, it provides more reasons for the followers to engage with the brand and share their activities regarding that event.

Be it Halloween, Black Friday, Elections, Thanksgiving, Easter, or any sort of event that is happening right now. As a brand, you must stay relevant to the current timeline.

Check what is grabbing the attention of your users. Create posts, and do social media marketing that can create relevance with the latest event.

These days it’s all about trust. The customers just want a brand that they can trust. Staying relevant to the current happenings will portray a sign of optimism and care to your customers.

If there is no event nearby, you can celebrate something, or you can offer discounts on certain products for the whole week. This will engage users and force them to share your page with relevant family and friends.

3. Respond Nicely & Fast

Research by Jay Baer cited that 42% of consumers expect a response within 60 minutes.

On social media, people expect brands to respond fast. Some customers even expect brands to stay online 24/7 and solve their issues immediately. 

If you are on social media, you need to know the nitty-gritty of how to make a Facebook business page.  Along with that, you need to answer the queries of your followers. You must respond to them in the most beautiful way possible.

Inevitably, things will mess up because they always do. But how you respond to customers will be remembered for future generations.

Train your staff to be kind and empathetic when responding to social media. The thing is, you are not just having a one-to-one conversation with the customer; in fact, it’s a one-to-many conversation with a lot of uninvited guests.

Whatever you do will be noted by these unknown guests.

If you respond nicely and promptly, then the customer will be happy to use your service again. But one rude response or late response will send a signal to the world that your brand is not serious about the problems of its customers.

One of the best examples I’ve come across is JetBlue Airlines. Whenever a customer shares a problem on their Twitter page, they respond promptly and give a satisfactory response.

4. Leverage User-Generated Content

People just don’t want a brand that blows its own horn. You need to build trust among your followers. And the way to do that is to take help from user-generated content.

Much has been said about this content, but in the end, people tend to believe other people's stories, feedback, and emotions more than they believe the brand.

Ask your loyal followers to share their stories with you. Request them to send you video testimonials that you can post on your social media where the world can see them.

When you start sharing other people's stories, it will not just develop trust among new customers but also motivate old customers to come forward and share their stories with you.

Check out how Zappos shares stories to engage customers and build trust.

5. Use Relevant Hashtags

It’s a universally known fact that customers use keywords to search on social media. What do you think about showing up when a relevant keyword is searched for your industry?

On Twitter and Instagram, people use hashtags to search for specific items or products. So, it is wise to post updates with hashtags.

Brands are already doing it. Your competitor is already doing it. It’s just a matter of time before your competitor will leverage hashtags to get more leads from social media.

Just look at CrazyEngage. How smartly they use hashtags on Twitter and get amazing results.  

6. Share Goodness from society

Everyone feels useful by helping others. When brands share the good stuff, it makes the followers feel good too.

From time to time, share a selfless post. Ask for a donation, appeal for a charity, or announce an individual donation from every order that you get.

This is not showing off. This is letting people know that as a brand, you care for society.

One important thing to keep in check is to stay transparent with your audience. Don’t let them think about how their money will be utilized. Post pictures or videos of people using that money.

Support a cause, ask for charity, and even announce food giveaways to the needy people in your city.

7. Use Emojis to express feelings

As discussed earlier, people don’t just want robotic brands. Sharing product updates is a good thing. But not using any emotions is a blunder. Everyone uses emotions to develop a bond, a feeling with the reader.

As a brand, you can also use emojis to express how you feel about certain things. Be it a current situation or something personal. When a brand shares an emoji, it gives a feeling of humanity, and it’s welcomed with love and appreciation.

Of course, avoid using the wrong emojis as customers will get upset with it.

If you follow Gary V, you might have realized how he expresses his feelings on social media. Whatever he feels, he just shares it with the world.

8. Find the most suitable time to post on Social media

It’s important to know that what you are posting is getting maximum exposure. Find out the best time to post on social media, and your posts will likely reach more people.

People will only engage with your updates if they see it. Posting updates when your fans are busy is the worst idea. So use social media scheduler to pubish a post.

You need to understand that your audience is scattered on a global level. So, to gain their attention, you must take care of their time and post at that time where more and more people can see and engage with the post. And for that schedule google my business posts will be a game changer for you.

9. Give a clear CTA

One of the most common mistakes startups and small businesses make is not giving out a clear call-to-action button. If you are making the audience think about what to do next on your website, this means that you need to place your CTA buttons right where it can easily be noticed. The end-goal is to generate an action; if the customer is not seeing your CTA, it means you haven’t done your homework right.

After a well-designed ad campaign or social media posts, people will be hooked to know more about your brand. The best approach is to drive your traffic on a landing page. This will help you to track down every user, and even if they leave, you’ll be able to track them back.

10. Shoutout to influencers

On social media, you’ll get traffic from across the globe. And with this, you’ll get followers of popular influencers. It’s necessary to make the followers feel special by sharing some valuable advice from their influencers.

Occasionally share something from your favorite influencer. The reason, of course, is to add value to your followers.

Pick an influencer from your niche and share a video, a picture, or a quote that can add something valuable to the user. This will help the audience connect with you in a more meaningful way.

11. Show Authority

Even if you are not the authority in your niche, you must showcase some on your social media page.

People on social media are looking for value and solutions to their problems. If you have a blog, share your blog posts on your page. Write a how-to on something related to your industry and share it with your fans. This will help you build authority over your competitors.

When people read that you are sharing some valuable information, they’ll share your posts with their friends. As Gary V shares in his book, “You need to give before you ask something from the customer.” This is your way of giving out.

Share advice, share a tip, or show the internal working of your brand. Make a connection with your users so that they can see how hard you work to put things out there for them.

12. Cross-promote your social media profiles

We are living in a small world. Although everyone is on every social media platform, some people prefer one platform over others.

As a brand, you need to target more customers from various platforms. You cannot just focus on one platform and ignore the other platforms.

You must cross-promote your social media pages so that interested people can like and share your posts.

Doing so will also help you to know which is the favorite platform of your audience, and you can plan things out in a better way.

13. Partner with popular brands

Think of it as a win-win situation for two brands.

Find out brands that can complement your product and collaborate with them. The competition is fierce out there. If you want to survive, you need to take help from other brands.

Develop campaigns that can help both brands. Think of ways in which you can give value to their customers and, in return, ask them to do the same for you.

When you share the love with other brands, customers feel some love too. This will be treated as a kind gesture from your side, and your followers will be more than happy to support your good cause.

Check how Moz collaborated with Yelp and created a win-win situation for both brands. If you are working locally, think of a global brand and see how both of you can help each other.

14. Keep track of your brand mentions

When customers mention you on social media, it presents an opportunity for you to engage with the customer.

At times customers will be angry; other times, customers will be glad. On every interaction, your job as a brand is to act professionally. No need to get hyper or show discomfort in front of the customer. Because of social media, everyone is watching your every move. So, track down what customers are saying about your brand and sensibly respond to them.

15. Get your employees on social media

People just don’t want to interact with an unknown brand. They want real people to deal with and interact with.

Ask your employees to start using social media and positively represent the brand. When employees get active on social media, the customers feel at ease in interacting with these people.

Build relationships, promote your brand, and listen to all the chatter that your customers are doing about your brand. Moreover, it will build trust, and it’ll be easy to deal with customers when they are already connected to some of your employees.

16. Use Attention-Grabbing headlines

Do you know that 80% of the users decide whether to read a post or not just by looking at the headline?

If you are willing to leave a lasting impact on the user, you need to use catchy headlines.

Few brands work hard to create impressive headlines. There are tools that you can use to make your headline as clickable as possible. Use  CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to measure the effectiveness of your headline.

This tool will analyze your headline from multiple angles and suggest the best possible headline that you can use to grab the attention of your audience.

17. Be Active on Social Media

If you want to get the attention of users, the best way is to stay active on social media. When you are active, this gives them a chance to interact with you. And this also builds trust in the customer.

Moreover, there will be more chances to listen to your audience and see what they want. This will help you to get real-time feedback from your audience and plan your campaigns, products, and social media posts accordingly.

Moreover, staying active on social media will help you to keep an eye on your competitors. Consider this as a plus point to learn more about the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors.

In the end

It is all about using social media to promote, interact, and create brand awareness of your business.

Using social media marketing is not a choice anymore. If you want to survive in this world, social media is something that will accelerate your business on a global scale.

There is not even a question about using specific social media platforms or not. It’s about using every social media platform and seeing which ones are most effective for you or which are the ones that your target market is using to engage and do business.

These social media tips will surely help you to modify your social media posts and give them a level of engagement with which followers will consider you as a family. Make their experience a memorable one. Don’t let them go away without experiencing your awesomeness.