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Building a powerful brand online is quite a challenge, as you need to take a lot of factors into consideration. Altogether with our experts, we’ve identified four pillars for building a successful strategy for your brand on social media. We’ve called them Social Media Strategy ACES and today, we’re revealing the last component: Engagement.
Let’s check out what our experts got to say about building a strong brand on social media!
You do you
Lisa O’Keeffe, Senior Brand & Content Manager – Day Out With The Kids (>300K followers on FB)
This comes back to knowing your audience, but also having the confidence to not just jump on the bandwagon. New platforms and tech is emerging every week, but trying to do everything will likely leave you somewhere in no man’s land, especially if you’re a small team. Focus on the things that bring you the best return or engage your audience most, and do them well – that’s not to say you shouldn’t explore what a new platform could mean for your business, but only divert resource if it genuinely brings something to the table for YOUR brand.
Be part of the first wave
Lora Dimitrova, Social Media Account Executive at M3 Communications Group, Inc.
If you worked hard to build brand awareness in 2019, you should definitely start working to engage your audience with it in 2020. The Influencers are still part of the social media communication strategy, so it’s a good idea to think about how you can work with them.Last but not least – if you have any concerns about TikTok, forget them. It might be the most effective channel for your business. The companies are about to enter it, so it’s important to be part of the first wave.
Have your voice rolled out across your social media presence
Milosz Krasinski, International SEO Consultant, Speaker, Blogger
Building a brand is all about consistency – McDonald’s doesn’t make $27.45 billion a year because its burgers are so great; it makes the mega bucks because customers recognise it instantly and, they know what they’re getting. Make sure that everything that you put out there – from blog posts to social media comments – follows a recognizable theme and has a consistent tone of voice – no matter who you’re talking to or the subject of the conversation. Similarly, make sure that your voice and theme are rolled out across your entire online presence; from your website to your social media platforms, to your advertising.
Reward people for engaging
Jack Paxton, Founder – TopGrowthMarketing.com and vyper.ai
The key to building a strong social media brand is engagement. How do you create content/experiences that will get comments and shares? One strategy that works for us is running giveaways and contests to reward people for engaging, this increases the engagement rates and gets you more organic reach and more social validation.
Be interactive
Matt Biegajewski, Digital Marketing Specialist, LiveWebinar
No one is going to engage with your content if it’s boring, unattractive and generic. Remember about giving a bit of soul to your brand – and a valid reason to interact with your content. Let it be via engaging social media content, interactive webinars, podcasts, creative advertising – be interacting and ignite engagement. Engagement definitely won’t knock your doors itself, you need to encourage your audience to take the desired action.
Lack of commitment may be a signal that someone has ignored the message or that it has not evoked any emotions. You shouldn’t neglect it. While reach in your target groups is extremely important, it’s engagement that shows you how you use it.
Establish your authority
Building an online brand might be a result of building a strong community and strong relationships with your target audience. Engaging conversations about your company, your industry or even your competitors might be vital to establishing your authority within a niche your business is targeting. Your audience will be more likely to engage with your brand if you act & are trustworthy and towards their needs.
Build a community
Kas Szatylowicz, Content Manager at Digital Olympus
Here, at Digital Olympus, we worked really hard on establishing our brand’s recognition on social media. It wasn’t easy, but we used some tips and tricks and made it work. Our best tip is to start building a community straight away. It’s your audience that will eventually help boost your brand’s awareness and online presence. We did it by creating Digital Olympus Twitter chats that we run every Thursday. It’s an awesome way to connect with our audience and keep reminding them of our existence. It’s also a chance for us to educate and engage our followers. Twitter chats help us expand our social media reach and build a consistent brand image.
Leverage UGC
Téa Liarokapi, Digital Marketer, Moosend
Make sure to repost mentions and reply to comments stat. People on social media are not exactly patient but are very ready and willing to reward a brand when it acknowledges their presence. This is the reason why User-Generated Content -which you should surely leverage- is so popular right now.
Think long term
Luciano Oliveira, Esq., LL.M. Attorney at Law and CEO of JurisOffice LL
It is really easy to get excited with a “new thing”, but social media shouldn’t be taken as just a novel way to promote your business and services. In the legal arena, where lawyers and law firms spend tons of money in SEO and PPC, adopting an approach of long-term consistent efforts towards social media is one of the best kept secrets.
Participating in the social media conversation doesn’t take much time. Add a reminder to your calendar to engage with social media every day and make sure your comments and participation are worth other people’s time. No out-of-pocket money for that, and you can generate leads not only from the resulting SEO optimization, but also from people who will learn about you through your social media presence!
Jump on the bandwagon but deliver value
Christopher Prasad, Marketing Manager, JookSM
When we want to be highly engaging, it is worth remembering that it is best to encourage people to interact with a topic they know and which is currently hot. They will then have a reference point and it will be easier for them to express themselves. This is where Real-time marketing comes in handy and may relate to countless categories – politics, sports, or art. Important in this case, however, is the ability to observe current events and a sense of aesthetics.
Engagement in social media is currently not a distinguishing feature of marketing activities, but one of the main pillars. Use all available channels and build an engaged community with them. Just remember that your actions in all social media should be consistent and thoughtful and that they should provide as much valuable content as possible to your recipients.
Over to you
Engagement is, without a doubt, an important pillar in your social media marketing strategy. Interactions impact on your brand awareness, sales, traffic and reach in your target group.
We hope that our experts’ insights will be helpful for rebuilding your social media strategy or building your brand on social media from scratch! Don’t forget to check out the rest of our ACES: Authenticity, Content, and Strategy. Enjoy our series!
