Five Tips on Optimizing Your Engagement Strategy

Last updated 2 years ago

An organization’s social media strategy should focus on customer and employee engagement. Leveraging platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs can help you optimize your engagement strategy.

Engaging Audiences with Social Media

Having a tough time engaging customers, employees and other stakeholders? Companies ranging from Coca-Cola to your local small business know that the key to successful engagement strategies lies in getting social.
The way people are using the Internet has evolved: they are no longer going online simply to look up information; they want it to be a place where they can go and interact—queue in Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social network platforms. Some digital technology experts have called this phenomenon a migration out of the Information Age to the Relationship Age.

If you haven’t aligned your social media strategy with your engagement strategy, here are five tips on how to get a good start.

1. Updates. Keeping your content fresh should be your number one priority. Make sure that whether you are maintaining a blog or a Facebook page, you post new content at least once a week. Statistics show that organizations that invest time in updating content have more followers, leading to optimized engagement.

2. Be an expert. No one wants to read content that is blatant advertising. Whether you’re doing an e-newsletter or writing a blog post, make sure your content is filled with tips, industry-related news, and thought-leadership that will appeal to your audience—they’ll be more likely to listen to what you have to say.

3. Don’t be afraid of the camera. Flip cameras and point-and-shoot cameras have become highly affordable. For under $200, you can invest in one to help you achieve the perfect balance of content. Videos are now among the highest-ranked content on Google searches, and being so, the companies that have a good mix of informational text, videos, and photographs in their social media strategy are likely to be the most successful.

4. Instill a sense of community. Converting the occasional viewer to a fan involves investing time in an interactive social media program. Organizations attracting and retaining the highest number of fans have created channels that provide their audiences with that unequivocal sense of community. Encouraging fan-to-fan interaction, replying to as many individuals as you can within a timely period, and sharing or retweeting a fan’s content are all great strategies to encourage that communal vibe.

5. Cross-pollination. Don’t forget to merge all of your social media platforms. Make some of your posts point back to your corporate website to increase traffic. Make sure to post your YouTube videos to your Facebook page, blog, or your Twitter feed.