Are you feeling as though your engagement is dropping on your social media channels? Are you seeking more return from your social efforts but aren't sure how to achieve it?
It’s a problem that many businesses can experience. They get their social media channels up and running, start posting and kind of hope for the best. You know, by way of comments, likes and shares. Unfortunately, that’s not going to work. You need to be investing consideration into your social posting. So what can you do? Start by exploring what apps are out there that can help make this easier.
Here are our current top three apps of the moment that can help you re-engage with your channels and followers:
1. An option to Live Chat on your website
Stick with me on this one - as it is not directly related to social media. Real-time engagement with your consumer is the future of business. We live in a fast-paced digital world; our attention span is limited. Our brand loyalty is easily discarded. People, your consumers, expect a response, and they expect it now.
Research has shown that social media users expect a brand to show a response to a complaint or query within an hour. The figures are kind of interesting, showing that more than 70 percent of social media users expect to hear back from the brand they’re interacting with on Twitter, and 53 percent want a response within the hour.
An effective tactic used by consumers to get restitution from a company is to smack talk them on social media. Mainly Twitter.
Nobody likes a public humiliation.
So you need to be able to respond quickly to keep your customers, well, your customers. But how do you provide this service, 24/7? Ain’t nobody got time for that.
In steps Drift, the automated communication software. It’s a fantastic tool that lets you interact with your customers straight away. We’ve been testing this out for several clients and have had excellent feedback. As a bonus, it’s fully integrated within HubSpot, too.
By offering this service on your website, you are giving your customers a platform to ask questions, seek information and make informed decisions about their purchase. The goal here is to eliminate the need to take to social media to complain, which often happens when a purchase is made without all the necessary information.
2. Facebook Live
Another app that we have found incredibly useful and positive for our customers is Facebook Live. It has outstanding engagement and is a fun, powerful way to connect with your followers and create new ones along the way.
Periscope was initially making inroads into owning that market. However, this was before Facebook snapped to its senses and launched Facebook Live. With the technology and the backing of a behemoth behind it, the potential is limitless.
Combined with the background analytics of Facebook to back this up, you get real value for zero cost.
It takes some getting used to, and not everyone is a natural fit in front of the camera. But the point is just to get in there and enjoy the ride; it doesn’t need to be perfect. People like the honesty of a live stream and you can get your personality across in a very relatable way.
3. Pinterest
It’s all about the visual, in a reality world. So we’ve been having some incredible results with Pinterest. And we are not alone: according to this report on digital social statistics, it has over 100 million active users. Additionally, Pinterest is a great tool for interaction and engagement with a wide-reaching demographic.
With rich pins - a pin that links back to the website - you can increase traffic to your site. Additionally, pins on Pinterest have a viral potential, over 80% of pins are repinned. Pins last forever too - so a pin created today, might get repinned in 2 years time if effective keywords are being used in the descriptions of the pins.
Do you have an online store? 88% of consumers have purchased a product they pinned, and 49% have purchased 5 or more products they’ve pinned.
Shopify users referred by Pinterest spend an average of $80 compared to the Facebook referral average of $40.
Super useful knowledge to take on board if your brand has an e-commerce presence.
Don't stop there, though. Pinning your blog images, team photos, social outings and the like, will also have the same effect. Pinning your Instagram posts works beautifully too - using an app like IFTTT makes this easy to achieve.
Stuck for a topic to write a blog on? Spend 10 minutes cruising Pinterest for inspiration.
As an idea, if your business is in the wedding game make a pin board on beach weddings, or trending colour palettes. Get pinning and see your engagement skyrocket.
Pinterest is an incredibly powerful medium.
There are thousands of apps available to help improve your social engagement. You need to find what fits best for you and your consumers. These are just three of our favourites - there are many more!
Both personally and for our clients, it's about investing time, effort and consideration into your social media. Like anything in life, a little tender loving care goes a long way. The time for complacency in the social world has passed.
If you would like to learn other hot tips about social media and how it can get firing for your business, why not take a look at some of our other blogs we have written:
3 Easy But Effective Ways to Use Social Media
4 Simple Ideas to Give Your Social Media A Boost
9 Tips and Tricks to Fire Up Your Social
