Is failure to engage ruining your social media strategy?
Business owners are busy creatures. We all know that. So, we’re encouraged to outsource the parts of our business that we can. And I’m all for that too!
But, as a social media manager, I urge you to take caution when outsourcing your social media engagement. I don’t mean your social media content creation or posting (it doesn’t matter who creates this so long as it’s on brand and engaging), but your interaction with your audience.
Before you say, ‘But Sam, I can’t keep up with all the DMs and comments by myself’, let me explain more about social media engagement.
What is social media engagement?
Social media engagement refers to the likes, shares, comments, mentions and DMs you receive from your audience. When people are interacting with your social media posts, you’re hitting the mark, and they’re interested in what you’re putting out.
When your audience interacts with you, you’re building your brand loyalty. And when they start sharing your content, you’ll find your referrals and network will also grow.
Social media marketing remains the most powerful way for any small business to create meaningful conversations with customers.
And this is why the following part is crucial.
Social media engagement needs to be honest
One of the biggest no-no’s of social media engagement is having someone else acting as YOU.
Again, I’m not saying you can’t outsource your engagement, but you need to make it transparent.
If you’re using a third party to answer comments, posts, DMs etc., have them interact with your audience on your behalf. For example, ‘Hi, it’s Sam here from ABC Mindcoach, responding on Joe’s behalf’.
That way, your customer knows they’re interacting with a representative of your brand but may not be speaking to the boss (so to speak). And most customers will accept this.
As long as you respond promptly, answer questions, and interact, customers will appreciate your brand and time.
Let me tell you a quick story about failure to engage on social media
I heard a story recently about a complete failure on behalf of a brand regarding social media engagement.
Person A had a question about Company X and their offering. So, Person A reached out on a DM to chat to Company X for clarification. During this series of DMs back and forth, Person A revealed quite a lot about their struggles in business, with Company X reassuring them they could help.
Later, Person A attended an event where the owner of Company X was. Person A was excited to finally meet face to face to discuss their DMs in person. Unfortunately, the owner of Company X had no idea who Person A was and had no recollection of their entire, quite personal conversation.
Why?
Because Company X had outsourced their social media engagement where the person pretended to respond as if they were the business owner.
As a result, Person A felt they had been lied to and wanted nothing further to do with Company X.
Don’t be like Company X!
Meaningful social media engagement should be your priority
Whether you do it yourself or outsource it (with the person noting they’re acting on your behalf), prioritise social media engagement.
Through social media, your customers will:
Seek support (it’s one of the most used ways customers contact businesses)
Love seeing and sharing interactions with others
Leave reviews, good and bad (which you should respond to)
Share your content with their networks
Come to know and love your brand, creating brand loyalty
But this only happens when you’re putting out content they want, interacting with them, and being authentic to your brand.
Need a social media engagement strategy review?
As a social media manager, most clients engage me to help with their content creation and posting, and many of them handle their own engagement. But, when I interact as their brand, I’m always very clear that it’s me responding.
If you’re finding your social media engagement isn’t what you’d want it to be, we can schedule a strategy session to see what’s working or what needs improvement.
Please get in touch so we can boost your social media engagement levels.