How To Initiate Brand Engagement on Social Media
You’re already doing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) you say? Brand engagement is an entirely different animal. Where CRM involves customers who have a history with your brand, brand engagement reaches out to consumers in an effort to make them customers. If you’re not initiating brand engagement with consumers, then you are giving up some serious B2B marketing and brand-building ground.
Brand engagement leverages social media, using branded communications that add value and keep consumers actively involved. If you’re currently on social media, do you know if the content you’re posting is resonating with your audience? We’ll do a social media analysis for you to help you find out – for free. The idea is to turn early relationship building into an ongoing conversation that involves give and take from both consumers and brand stewards alike.
Check out these 5 ways to build your B2B brand through social engagement.
1. Initiate the conversation. Then keep it going.
Social media marketing is the ultimate vehicle for reaching out to consumers and finding the right audience for your brand. Shareable content like blogs, newsletters, tips, coupons and other value-added content will get passed around on social media until it finds its way to the right consumers. Once you find your audience and start the conversation, it’s critical that you keep it up. Keep reaching out, invite them into the fold, and put your newfound consumers on the path to becoming customers.
2. Add Value.
It’s vital to add value to your interactions. Don’t make it about sales—your goal is to form an emotional connection through your brand interactions. Think news, tips, tricks, solutions, recipes, how-to advice, you name it. Any content that’s valuable, shareable, and topical. Your interactions should be something that consumers enjoy revisiting time and again. Keep it light, useful, and fun.
The right social media marketing strategy can help your business drive meaningful traffic to your site and build a strong relationship with consumers. At BNP Engage, we strive to bridge the gap between you and your target audiences. Our Social Media Coordinator, Lauren Devens, dives into 5 powerful social media tips that you can start doing today to help grow your business:
3. Create a community.
Engage readers and give them ownership over the relationship with user-generated content. Generate excitement with photo or essay contests, fun quizzes, recipe sharing, and opportunities to vote on brand decisions. Think of M&Ms asking customers to vote on a new color or a pet care brand putting out a call for photo contest entries.
4. Share it, don’t control it.
Now that you’ve created this amazing, dynamic community, it’s time to set it free. While you’ll always be the brand steward, let consumers take ownership of your community. Let them share in the content, steer the conversation, and drive the interaction—all in the name of brand engagement.
5. Encourage action.
No matter how friendly, useful and engaging your online community is, there’s nothing wrong with promoting your brand every now and then. It should be inserted at the end of a post, the final punctuation mark at the end of your engaging conversation.
Effective examples include: adding a link to your website to learn more, email or newsletter sign up, reply by date for limited time offers, registering for an event, sweepstakes or contest entry, FREE offers—free recipes, free calendar, free coupon, free alerts, more.
Strategic B2B Online Branding Services
Looking to take your brand’s social media presence to the next level? Let the digital experts at BNP Engage drive your brand engagement efforts with unique content marketing, blog management, social media testing and more. Contact us today!