Each week, in our Mid-Week Marketing Mash-Up, we bring you the advice of five must-read marketing articles in just two minutes or less.
One of the best ways to increase your followers’ trust in you and loyalty to your brand is to continually engage with them. With so many online platforms, the possibilities for this are endless. Here are five great ways you can increase online engagement with your customers.
On Social Media: 4 Tips To Keep Your Most Loyal Fans Engaged On Social Media: No matter what social media platforms you utilize, the best way to see success in them is not to think too much about the size of your audience. Pay attention to followers who are already passionate about your brand because they’ll be your best promoters. More fans will come with time. To nurture the followers you already have, use visual content that is memorable. Try giving away a prize that your audience would want to win from you, and be sure it is relevant to your business. Turn the attention to your fans by encouraging them to post photos of your products and services, and then engage with their posts. Also, share things that your followers will find useful, or will help them solve a problem. Ultimately, focus your social media content on your existing fans—they’re the ones who will bring you even more loyal followers.
In An Online Community: 5 Things NOT To Do When You Respond To Members In Your Online Community: When you’ve created an online customer community, managing it purposefully is vital to its success. Keep a community your customers enjoy returning to by avoiding these kinds of interactions. When answering questions, do so in a way that invites discussion and participation rather than merely showing off your knowledge. Be patient with those who have posted something irrelevant to the current discussion, and never make someone feel like they’re contributions are unwanted. If you don’t know the answer to a question, be honest but still provide a helpful answer. Don’t shamelessly promote your products and services as the answer to someone’s problem; instead, present it as an option if it really would be a perfect solution. Lastly, even if it could be because of their error, never blame someone for the problem they’re encountering. Just focus on helping them solve it.
In A Webinar: 3 Ways To Keep Participants Engaged During A Webinar: If you want to keep your participants engaged in your webinar, you should give them something to do for the duration of it. For example, ask questions and have participants post answers in a chat. Also, make sure you’re talking about things your attendees actually want to hear. You can discover what these topics may be by conducting a survey or a poll. Or, create a scavenger hunt that can be used a kind of assignment prior to the webinar, and be sure to structure it around what your participants will find helpful and interesting. Whatever you decide to do, your goal should be to engage your attendees during your webinar.
With Video: Social Video Marketing: Create Conversations and Build Customer Loyalty: Social video marketing can influence current and potential customers to spread your brand’s message if you’ll put in the extra effort to encourage interaction with your content, and encourage consumers to share their own ideas. To do this, begin by putting valuable video content on your social networks. Be sure to include a call to action like commenting on, liking, or even sharing your videos. Adding share buttons to your channel will encourage viewers to share with others. Add some personality and emotion to videos by demonstrating how your products make a difference or how customers have used your products. Highlight those customers by incorporating them and their ideas in your videos. If you want to be humorous, be very careful because it can backfire on you. Lastly, do some analyzing. What are you trying to accomplish through social video marketing? Though it can increase brand awareness, it should also build relationships with consumers and increase your sales.
With Visual Storytelling: Seven Tips For Jumpstarting Your Visual Storytelling Strategy: It has been said before that “content is king,” and this year, the crown is being passed on to visual story telling. Visual storytelling creates opportunities for businesses to increase brand awareness, trust, customer loyalty, and even engaged communities. Here’s how to begin. Embrace visuals because the brain processes them 60,000 times faster than it does text. Be sure to personalize your visual content to best fit the social platform you’re posting to, and to best encouragement consumer engagement. Form your strategy by listening to your consumers’ questions, looking at conversation topics and issues they care about, and then create visual content to encourage further engagement on these things. Be sure to tell a story. Begin with a story concept that connects with your strategy and goals to ensure a great outcome. Include sharing options so that your content can have maximum reach. Then, analyze what is most shared and discover how you can extend it further. Lastly, “plan for what you can and what situations your company would respond to, but don’t forget to embrace outlying time-sensitive opportunities as they arise.”
How do you encourage online engagement with your followers? 
