When it comes to digital marketing, social media is undoubtedly superior in helping brands reach target audiences, as well as in communicating with and building relationships with them. Through comment sections, direct messaging, and a simple like button, brands can create lasting impressions with their audience. 💫
What is Brand Engagement and Why is it Important?
Brand engagement encompasses the interactions and connections individuals have with a brand. On social media, it's crucial for brands to engage with their audience, seizing opportunities to show they genuinely care about their customers. Whether it's responding to a question or acknowledging a positive comment, these interactions go beyond building brand awareness, reflecting a sincere interest in the community 🖤. Where social media is a vast space of impersonal content, it is crucial to show a commitment to authenticity and person-to-person connections, making brand engagement a key factor in building a relationship with your audience.
Understanding the Audience
Understanding your audience is the first step in leveraging social media for brand engagement✨. Tailoring your content to resonate with your target audience is key, recognizing that different platforms may cater to distinct demographics. Utilizing platform analytics can provide valuable insights into audience preferences, helping tailor strategies to effectively reach them. For example, Comedic content that performs well on TikTok may be trumped by aesthetically pleasing imagery on Instagram 😉.
Strategies for Effective Brand Engagement on Social Media
With an understanding of how brand engagement is important to a company’s image and presence, we’ve compiled a list of strategies on how to practice it. These strategies focus on using audience insights to target content, interactions, and social media activity strategically. Note that digital marketing is full of trial and error and what works for some brands, may not work for others. As your brand sets out to try various social media engagement strategies, consider these:
Build an Authentic Voice
Social media platforms are where brands can let their personality shine through. One of the easiest ways to build effective brand engagement is to be true to your brand’s unique image, voice, mission, and goal. A few ways you can achieve an authentic voice:
- Give your brand some ✨ personality✨. Whether it’s through content, comments, or captions, the voice you develop will help you to engage with your target audience. Whether your approach is old or young, sophisticated or casual, make sure it’s a good fit for your brand identity.
- Show some BTS. Behind the scenes footage is where you can show your audience the PEOPLE behind the brand and give your brand some realness and relatability. Show your audience that your brand is made up of fun, hardworking, creative, or smart individuals just like themselves. When they read your content, your comments, or see your products, they’ll make connections to the real people behind the screen.
- Don’t be afraid to start new trends and be true to your brand. While hopping on trends is fun and undoubtedly effective, your ability to try something new can also stand out to viewers. No matter how niche your brand’s product or industry is, there is likely an audience for it. So don’t be afraid to introduce your own spin on things if you think it’ll help your brand engage with the right people 🫶!
Be Active
For the most part, positing more is effective. Keeping your brand’s page on people’s radar through content, comments, and DMs is important for maintaining a strong presence. The more users see your brand, the more likely they are to follow along.
- Be active as often as possible. While it may not be most effective to post every five minutes, it wouldn’t hurt to monitor your social accounts and current trends nearly everyday. Trends move in and out quickly and audiences move on even quicker.
- Acknowledge comments. Words hold great value, even a small comment. Replying to both positive and negative comments demonstrates your commitment to hearing your audiences' feedback. It’s likely that acknowledging their comment, even with just a like, will increase their chances of engaging with future content.
- Be timely with engagement. When a comment rolls in, don’t be afraid to shoot back a reply. With too much time passed, users have already forgotten they left a comment in the first place. Direct messages left unopened can also create a bad impression on those trying to reach out to you. Timely replies show that you're reachable and truly care about customer feedback.
- Don’t underestimate the power of engagement 🤍. Even though it may seem as though liking your audience's comments will do little in the long run, being active and present can go great lengths. Individual level connections can lead to broader community building and understanding of your brand's voice.
Use your resources
Apart from the communication you make through posts and comments, your brand can engage with its audience through less direct methods. For instance using your brand’s resources or connections can help you create unique and appealing content or opportunities for followers.
- Use user-generated content (UGC). UGC serve as authentic testimonials from real people. It can help build a sense of community and trust by acknowledging honest feedback. It can also help to represent diverse members of your audience.
- Use connections to influencers or other brands. Influencers and collaborations can both build and strengthen your community. Even engaging with their accounts in small ways, such as following them or liking their posts, can help you reach your audience.
- Consider giving exclusive offers. Maintaining your community is just as important as building it. The occasional incentive for loyal followers can show that you appreciate them and want to engage.
- Hold a contest or event. Along similar lines, holding fun contests or online events such as a livestream, can build personability and connections. Something that requires your audience to take action, engage with a post, or visit your website can help drive sales as well as grow the sense of community💫.
Ultimately, find strategies that work best for your brand and be open to adjusting them over time
Social media is ever-changing, and it is so hard to predict where it will be a year from now. Don’t get too comfortable with any one engagement tactic! The best way to increase your brand’s engagement is to try out a variety of strategy and shift them to fit your needs. Engagement may be more or less successful depending on something as small as the time of day. It’s important to keep in mind that your brand has a unique image, voice, and audience. Any strategy will only help those share those factors in effective ways. Thus, the most important strategy is to develop an honest voice and be adaptable to the fast paced nature of social media 🫶✨.