3 ways to engage customers on social media

Most companies have embraced social media as part of their marketing mix, but they don’t always understand what makes it successful. That means their efforts are often through trial and error.

Meanwhile, there’s rising pressure on marketing budgets even as organizations look for ways to identify, measure and optimize key performance drivers of social media activities.

We recently studied corporate blogs from Fortune 500 companies to examine effective communication traits and provide recommendations for managing corporate social media. Of the companies that were either running or planning to run social media initiatives, only 12% thought they were doing it effectively.

So how can organizations make sure their social campaigns are effective? Below, we share three techniques for organizations that are looking to engage with their customers.

1) Be relevant

Social media users are looking for expertise, competency and insights that aren’t available in traditional media settings. Corporate social media is only successful if the right spokesperson is chosen.

2) Tell a story

In the social media space, where everything is about connecting with peers, narratives represent the most common way of addressing an audience. Our results show that storytelling heavily influences traffic numbers.

3) Be conversational

When activity on a corporate social media presence is conversational in nature, it draws more visitors. People participate in online conversations because they value interpersonal connections.

It is also important to remember that social media success should be measured not only by the number of comments, but also by the number of conversations present. Because visitors’ average time on a page is usually short, consider technical features that group related comments and increase the visibility of corporate participation, such as highlighting answers from the company.

Source: Forbes.com