When it comes to social media for your business, you may have heard people talking about ‘engagement’ and how important it is. But what does it mean? Claire from Clarita Digital is back on the blog to explain all and share some top tips for being a whizz at engagement.
What is ‘engagement’ on social media?
Engagement defines the actions taken on your content. So, on social media, likes, clicks, comments and shares. On email, clicks. On blogs, it’s comments and link clicks. On
Why is it so important for your business?
Engagement works two ways for your business. When you receive it on your content, it shows us how successful it is with our audience. Not only are they seeing it (known as ‘reach’ or ‘impressions’) they are interacting with it.
When the search and social media feed algorithms record the activity on your content, they rank it as valuable or meaningful content. And this will widen your audience, as they’ll show it to more people.
Once the algorithm picks up a connection between your content and a user, it starts to play cupid, showing them your content more consistently and bringing them firmly into your audience.
These interactions are valuable insights! They tell you who is taking an interest in your business, giving you a profile of who your potential customers are online. You can then customise your content to this engaged audience.
Using engagement to build our online brand
We need to engage online as our business too i.e. commenting as our Facebook page on other people’s posts, retweeting on Twitter, sharing and tagging on Instagram Stories. It not only puts our brand out there, but authentic engagement also brings another dimension to our online identity, revealing our values and personality.
We must remember, it’s not enough just post content. Digital marketing is not The Field of Dreams. If you post it, they won’t necessarily come. You are competing with millions of voices online. Show how you’re different from everyone else with your proactive engagement.
Top tips for engaging on social media
1. Make your content ENGAGING. Make it relatable. A discussion starter. Resourceful, empowering. Discounts and special offers also can work but be aware of devaluing your brand and message with those. (And I have a module on this with plenty of discussion starter ideas in my Digital Thrive course).
2. Give/ get. Real engagement works both ways. When you actively engage with your customers online by commenting and liking their content, you’ll start to see it paid back. Read and comment on posts, reply to all the comments on your posts, share other people’s content, tag them, talk with them on their social media channels.
3. Be authentic. Read the post you are commenting on carefully, pitch in with more ideas or tell the poster what you specifically like about what they’re sharing. If you can’t think of anything to say…move on! Find a post that catches your interest better – while still keeping it relevant to
4. Get organised. Set 10 minutes aside 3-4 days a week at least for some engagement time. And engagement is different to answering customer enquiries on social media, you should ideally respond within 24 hours to those.
Engagement = leads
Once you’ve built this engaged audience it’s vital you have a plan to convert them into a sale. Ask yourself, where do they go once they’ve engaged with a post? If they were to check your profile after noticing you commenting online, what actions do you want them to take there? i.e. visit your website, sign up to a mailing list, contact you for a specific reason or service?
Learn more!
Understanding how engagement benefits your business is just one of the aspects of Claire’s Digital Thrive learning and support programme. As well, as a 60-minute consultation about your business and your marketing online, you get a personalised training plan, templates, access to over 20 webinars on topics across social media, content, measuring success, building your audiences and generating leads.
Follow Claire on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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