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Posted on by Chris Kyriacou

2 Simple Steps for Social Media Engagement

With the relatively new introduction of social media marketing, it has been constantly debated as to how businesses can successfully engage with stakeholders through proven social media tools, with social media marketing still in its early growth stage, there is no subsequent winning formula to suggest how engagement will gain your businesses social media account more followers, likes, subscribers etc. We go through 2 easy steps, businesses can employ, that will help them tackle this much talked about subject.

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MySpace  and Google+ are currently displayed in ‘limbo’ as their future within social media marketing has yet to be determined, with the fast decline of MySpace and the lack of paid advertising available to brands through Google+ they are consequently viewed as insignificant social media tools at the moment and hence in ‘limbo’. However Google plus’ direct link with your SEO ranking has encouraged more and more brands to adopt Google plus into their social media marketing strategies.


Step 1 of social media engagement is to identify the primary social media platforms that are relevant for your business; Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn. It is then important to compliment your primary social media tool with an appropriate secondary social media tool i.e. Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram etc. This decision is to link your secondary social media tool with your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn account so that it can encourage engagement; however the decision needs to be based on how specific it is to your business, its market, customers and other stakeholders that social media platform applies to. You don’t only have to stick to these, but you do need to prioritize and pick one channel over the others, not all social media channels need to be utilised.

The second step of social media engagement is how to engage with stakeholders successfully through your chosen primary and secondary social media platforms.
First you need to time your posts, Wednesday, Tuesday & Monday are the most popular time’s brands are posting on social media so to encourage engagement, post on days were users are more likely to engage, engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday. With recent data showing that the optimal time to post on social media is between 1:00 pm and 3:00 pm, when Facebook traffic peaks. However remember that this needs to be tailored specific to the demographics of your target market and that these peak times may not specifically appeal to them.

Then you need to implement your content which is dependent on your objectives of your social media account, Are you looking to attract new customers? Or looking to provide customer service? For MNE’s (Multi-national enterprises) it may be required to manage two separate accounts, one for engaging with stakeholders and the other for providing customer service. Social media is simple, so keep it simple – If the content you’re implementing isn’t of interest to yourself it won’t be of interest to the stakeholders you are pursuing social media relationships with.

Lastly, this needs to be consistently cycled and applied to maintain an active social media account, customers are regularly aware of and constantly engaging with, and then the whole process repeated again.

However the frequency of engagement needs to be managed with research suggesting that 1-2 posts a day is ideal for brands. This number of posts had a 19% higher interaction rate than 3 posts or more. Supporting the idea that too much content is ineffectual to the customer and could consequently result in a negative outcome i.e. an unfollow, unlike etc. 

#TheFutureOfMarketing

By Chris Kyriacou

@MrChrisKyriacou
Connect with me on LinkedIn

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