Why You Should Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Businesses in every industry up and down the economic landscape have been negatively impacted by the quarantine brought on by COVID-19. The effect has been so widespread and so disruptive, that many companies have cut non-essential spending by upwards of 70 percent. Budget shifts and business pivots have practically removed traditional advertising and marketing activities from the strategic plans being executed by organizations focused on short-term profitability while attempting to lay groundwork for future success in the hopes that we’re on the verge of turning the corner to find business as usual waiting for us. However, where businesses are seeing an uptick and should be focusing their efforts, is an increase in inbound website traffic approaching 15% monthly. There has also been an almost 10% increase in the number of minutes the average adult spends on social media per day, making social media a perfect resource to focus efforts on for retaining and building your client base.

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Why are social media platforms valuable sources of customer engagement, especially during the pandemic and subsequent quarantine? GoingClear will explore the relationship between businesses and their followers and provide five reasons why it’s crucial to engage with your social media followers.

Social Media Should Be Your Primary Method of Engagement

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, marketers have found that just as organizations have cut back non-essential spending, so too have consumers. And because consumers have limited their consumption to what they feel are essential goods and services, they are spending more time researching their choices online. They are looking at and comparing products, engaging with online customer service agents, trying to determine not only which products or services provide the most value and quality, but they are also exploring brand values and mission statements and weighing every company’s social worth to find out of a business is giving back to its community or acting in a way that’s ethical relative to its employees and customer base.  

These search habits are the perfect opportunity for your organization to leverage online content and engagement. Properly seeding your blog with educational material and creating extremely targeted inbound marketing paths with effective calls-to-action will help to not only maintain your existing base of customers, but have them talking and drawing in more customers. Engaging with customers as they actively participate with your social media pages is one of the most powerful business practices you can engage in, given the state of the economic landscape. Here’s five reasons why social media interaction should be your primary focus. 

1. Social Media Engagement Is Largely Free

Setting up a business page on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube are largely free endeavors from the start. Creating posts, responding to client feedback and engaging with customers in clever and exciting ways, all free, and all methods of managing and maintaining the customer relationship. Once you’ve got the ball rolling, it is a good idea to hire a dedicated social media manager, which for a modest fee will be generating traffic to your brand, and driving leads at your sales team in organic and natural ways that will maximize return on investment over time. 

2. Social Media Allows You to Create a Peer Group in Your Industry

No business owner should be trying to do it all themselves, and not operations manager should be trying to run their business in the relative dark. Social media allows your leadership to make connections and connect with peers to create conversations and drive innovation. Customers will see these interactions and themselves have a better understanding of your brand as well as confidence that you’re seeking out ways of improving your own services and products to better serve your client base. 

3. Going Where the Customers Are

While businesses have seen an increase in open rates and follow-ups through email marketing efforts, customers are largely unresponsive along traditional methods of sales contact, especially via phone. And even though they are opening sales emails, they are still responding less often overall. And as we know with sales in general, if you can’t reach your customers to present your products and services, you don’t have any sales. Engaging across social media, where clients are less guarded and more open to interacting with your brand, you can use dialogue, private messaging, and even shared links and information to create opportunities for engagement. The more often you engage with leads, the more apt they are to eventually convert.. 

4. Increase Brand Loyalty

Social media engagement allows businesses various methods by which to reward followers and generate a sense of exclusivity in the community. Followers can be granted discounts or access to special offers inaccessible to non-followers. Over time, these types of interactions will create and sustain brand loyalty, as they will consistently seek your brand out over others, and inspire others to do the same. 

5. Spreads Your Brand Identity, Generates Leads

We’ve touched on this briefly in the previous post, but it’s important enough to warrant expanding upon that when you start engaging with clients in a positive way, solving their problems and creating value with coupons and offers through exclusivity, customers will begin to talk and build buzz around your brand. We as a culture love to share when we’ve had a great experience with a brand, and so when each of your followers shares with an average of over 300 of their connections, you are bound to start seeing an influx of new customers interacting with your page. Ultimately, these new followers can be converted into leads and active customers with the right inbound marketing mechanisms in place.

Let GoingClear Manage Your Social Media Presence

Generating and maintaining sales from social media can become over time a full-time, complex endeavor. Meanwhile, you’re working through the challenges of the pandemic already before you, and your need to focus on a constantly evolving business strategy to keep your organization afloat in the short term as you lay the groundwork for long-term success behind the scenes. That doesn’t leave you much time for genuine engagement on social media. That’s where your marketing relationship with Boston’s premier digital marketing and SEO company, GoingClear, can have an impact on your bottom line. Engage GoingClear’s social media management services and watch how they take the reins on your social media activity, from content management to engagement, leaving your staff and yourself able to focus on revenue-generating activities. For more information on social media management and other services, book a consultation with our team today.