Social media has changed from being an amazing benefit to a completely incorporated part of every-day life for most in a little more than a decade.

What is social media engagement?

In the past, organizations that wished to connect with their clients and sell products, used radio or newspaper ads. Such media only promoted one-way communication.
Social media has fundamentally changed the way communication works between companies and their customers, basically creating a public forum for communication between the company and all its customers. A customer may leave a comment, or comments, praising your products or customer service, stating that someone will be sure that they’ll get quality from your business if they visit your website. Then a company can respond, in real time, thanking the person for the recommendation.
Communication between businesses and their customers is now a two-way channel, encouraging customers to interact in completely different ways through their favourite brands.

Why does social media matter for business?

Small businesses around the world know that social media is here to stay, but that doesn’t guarantee you still have the ability to invest the time or resources needed to build an appropriate identity on the right networks.

Here are 8 factors things you need to be doing to increase your social media presence:

Analyse your current engagement through social media. If you want to know about your social media marketing efforts, you to analyse how successful they are. This will help you understand what you did right or what you need to do better. You won’t have a lot of information about what works and what doesn’t until you follow up and assess your most recent social media marketing plan. This helps you figure out what content area you need to focus on to improve your engagement.
Set goals and strategy: Set clear engagement objectives here to know where to concentrate your content efforts. If you want more engagement with your messages, then you know you’re going to need to focus on creating interesting content. It’s great to have an objective to improve your social media profile, but that’s just the beginning. You need to put together a road map to get there until you know what you want to accomplish.
Engaging contents and branding awareness: Knowing your audience is key to success on social media, because your audience’s interests and needs will determine the type of content you should share and how you should engage your followers. Always use engaging and encouraging contents on social media like polls, contests, and giveaways. Using brand hashtags provide more opportunities and motivation for your audience to share, and it makes tracking your efficiency much easier. Social media is also a matter of connection and commitment, and it’s the only way you can foster the relationships you want to build and earn the trust of your audience.
Schedule and automate posts: It takes time and effort to participate and be up-to-date on social media, but there are a number of automated solutions available that you can use to automatically upload messages and plan messages up to a month in advance. If you do this, you create more time for personal engagement with your audience, which brings us to the next point.
Be active in your engagement with your audience: Social media doesn’t mean just post the contents or pictures and walk away. Social media is all about communication and interaction, and that’s the only way you can promote the connections you want to create and win your audience’s trust. Be present and responsive, and your audience will grow organically.
Keep your presence at very regular intervals: You’ll minimize the time you need to devote to social media using the right automation tools, but it will still take you at least 15 minutes a day, per platform, to follow your networks, answer questions, and have conversations. Show up regularly, and your customers will start to know when to expect a response or reaction. You can also use that time to follow some of your customers or service providers. Building your network is a must, and the engagement concept goes both ways.
Provide a consistent voice to your audience: For brand building and awareness, social media is perfect, so it’s important that each post you make is in line with that brand and image. When you have several individuals delegated to social tasks, this may become troublesome because everyone can add their own personalities to their messages. Taking a little time now to be sure your messages are consistent will pay off in the long run.
Always monitor your progress and metrics: The use of social media is constantly increasing, and there are now more active users per month than ever before, particularly on the best websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. Social media relationships have many benefits for your business, but it’s important to take the time to nurture your presence if you want to enjoy them. Keeping track of the number of followers you have and their engagement with your brand will tell you what kind of accomplishments you’re achieving. If your metrics are down, ask yourself why and fix it.

Conclusion: Engaging in social media is more than simply building up followers on social platforms. It’s important to measure them to make sure you’re on the right path with your strategy and engage with them in a real way to increase their loyalty to your business.

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