When you have brand presence on different social networks, you want to have thousands of followers. The more the better. But as fast as you gain more followers, it’s just as easy to lose them.

Why engagement?

Followers are not only numbers-they are people. Interesting people! Numbers are important, yes, but it’s also making sure that the people following you actually have the same interests as you or your proposal. This is why one of the main goals of any social media manager is not only to gain followers but to build a long lasting relationship with them.

A report from Thunderhead found that two out of three businesses have no customer relationship strategy in place. According to the same report, one out of three businesses doesn’t know if their customers value their relationship. If you are one of those businesses on the dark side, keep reading, we’ll give you some tips to change that.

Tactics to boost your engagement on social media

Step 1 – Make the first move

To build a relationship someone has to begin the contact, and in this case, it’s got to be you. I know it’s probably going to be difficult to do that every time you have a new follower, or with each of your already existent ones.

But with automation tools, you can create an auto response message, so every time you get a new follower they’ll receive a message from you, or in specific situations or events you can also create auto response messages to get in touch with them.

Step 2 – Use every platform

One of the best ways to empathize with your followers is to write about current events, topical subjects, and current situations.

Step 3 – Receive and give feedback

Don’t ignore your followers. If your posts receive an answer, and it’s coherent, reply back! They will feel good to know that you care and genuinely want to make connections.

Step 4 – Repurpose your best content to all platforms

Not all social networks are the same, and their users are also not the same. So if you have valuable posts that you want to share on all your platforms, just adapt it to each one of them. This way you can take your top content and use it more than once.

Step 5 – Use a social inbox

It’s not easy to manage several accounts and try to engage with the community in each one of them. But there are tools that make the job easier, like the social inbox. With this tool, you are able to check and respond to all your mentions, comments, direct messages, and likes in one place. You can see it in order by profile, or all together, and begin the engagement with your community of followers.

How to set up your social engagement strategy

There are fundamentals components to build a solid social media engagement strategy. One of them is campaigns. The word may sound as like something very big and that it will cost you a lot of money, but the truth is that you can plan small campaigns from time to time to make sure that you are connecting with your key audience.

Content is a powerful tool to connect as well. People are looking for content that looks good and is useful to them. So take the time to create valuable content according to the needs of your followers, knowing the community of people that follow you and the interests they share with you or your brand.

Finally, use influencers! They are a very important tool to drive organic growth in your social media. Usually, bloggers about certain topics have a lot of followers, so you have to connect with them in order to gain followers and actually engage with them.

There are not many social media management tools that offer the feature of finding influencers.

Social media engagement is redefining marketing and relationships with customers. By measuring the number of followers, comments, likes and shares you can start telling how well are you engaging with your community. Using the tips and tools we just explained in this article, you will begin to grow your own path of social engagement for your brand.

If you found this article useful, please leave a comment and let’s start a conversation!

 

Author: Ben Kaznik

Ben Kazinik (@eclincherrocks) is an inbound marketer for eClincher, the world’s most powerful social media management platform. He enjoys hiking, cooking, soccer, and visiting his family around the world. Email me at – [email protected] or connect on my LinkedIn.