In many of my conversations and meetings with client’s we’re often asked about the measures of engagement: How will you know if a social campaign is effective? How can you tell if the engagement is ‘good’? What does ‘good’ look like? or, How to attract the ‘right’ people to your accounts.
All great questions.
In our usual style of ‘sharing is caring’ we thought that in this week’s blog topic, we would take a look at these questions and offer a little more insight and tangible strategies that you, whether a small or growing business can implement, as easy as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5…
This is what we utilise as the 5 pillars of social media engagement:
Now, let us explain each one briefly…
- Advocacy – we all know that advocacy is other people valuing your product or service and influencing others to do the same. This is always the strongest of all marketing methods, and most sought after in terms of enquiry generation with all organisations. The way to build advocay online is to not only be ethical and transparent to your audiences, but to provide consistency and value over a long period of time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Nor should you expect it to.
- Contribution – Doing. Social contribution is essentially the responsibility you have to your community (aka your audience) by being present and valuable within the platforms (sites) and their needs (content). So staying frequent and ensuring you talk about the things that matter, to them.
- Endorsement – Another form of ‘advocacy’ yet this refers to advocates or influencers actually endorsing and promoting yuor product without needing or having to. This endorsement can come in the way of sharing your news, posts or content across their own audiences. Think of someone opening a door for you as you enter a building, always say thank you and acknowledge the compliment that comes with that.
- Appreciation – Again, the art of saying thank you. Too many organisations today take digital engagement too literal – social is still very much about people, and therefore the art of basic appreciation and manners is vital, say thank you, have human real interaction and ensure your audience feels valued and understood through your channels.
- Observation – It’s not all about talking and shouting out, listening is just as vital as speaking, as it is in ‘real life’ listen to your audience and their on-going behaviour and interaction, do they like what you are saying, is it relevant, does it match their desires? Then, act.
I think nowadays far too many people think that digital is another world outside of natural human behaviour, when in fact it’s the absolute opposite. Digital engagement is very much about human interaction, just on a deeper level, where you have to work just as hard (if not harder) through digital screens to demonstrate transparency and ethics, which builds trust. Just like real life.
If you would like to learn more about how you can develop an effective and valuable social media engagement strategy for your organisation, whether you’re a start-up or innovative SME – we’d love to chat.
Call our professional and friendly team today for a free consultation on 01246 252855
