Social Media Marketing / Design / Princeton, NJ

So you’ve set up social media accounts for your small business… but things are feeling a little lackluster.  Or, downright slow, even.  Don’t throw up your hands and walk away from the digital world!  Get your customers engaged with your posts, and generate excitement around your brand.  Here are several ways to generate customer engagement on social media:

1. Be yourself.  Yes, the same advice your mother gave you all those years ago rings true today!  Your customers love you & your brand for who you are, and that’s why they keep patronizing you.  The tone and attitude you bring to your business should be carried across to your social media campaigns.  This is a core element of successful branding, and will only help strengthen your business.  Speaking in a familiar, consistent tone conveys authenticity, and nothing is more valuable than that.

2. Ask questions.  Give your followers a chance to speak their mind, share a story, or voice an opinion and they will!  Come up with a question or poll that is relevant to the service you provide, and encourage your customers to tweet their reply or post in the comments.  Keep the conversation going by replying, retweeting, and posing follow-up questions. 

3. Create a contest on social media.  A little incentive never hurt anyone!  Inspire your customers to share something on social media - a photo of them using your product, a testimonial, a favorite memory - and offer a prize for participation.  Be sure to promote the contest to your fans through emails, and in-store posters, and watch the engagement happen.  Again, acknowledging participants is a must - even if they aren’t the big winner! 

4. Use images.  As this article from Social Media Today explains, images posted to Facebook generated much higher engagement than any other type of content.  Harness that power and share fun images from your business.  Encourage your fans to share their own pictures, and re-post them.  Keep it relevant, and keep it fun.

There are plenty of ways to inspire engagement on social media, and these will get you headed in the right direction.  What has worked for your business on social media? 

A few weeks ago I posted the first in a series of write-ups reviewing tools for smarter tweeting.  If you’re managing the Twitter account for your business - and also trying to, you know, run the business - finding an effective way to plan and share content is crucial.  Save time, tweet smarter, and share great content with your followers using these programs!

Last time, I reviewed Buffer, an app that allows you to schedule as many Twitter and Facebook posts as you can write ahead of time.  It’s great - you can prepare all the tweets and posts you need, and not only does Buffer post them, but it will give you metrics to show you how many RTs and clicks you got for each one.

But let’s talk about those clicks… obviously the goal is to share content that gets as many clicks as possible, so naturally, your odds are increased when you have more followers online.  But how do you know when that is?  That’s where Tweriod comes in. 

Tweriod analyzes your Twitter followers and provides you with a chart showing how many of your followers are active at different times throughout the day.  It provides these statistics for each specific day, as well as weekends combined, and weekdays combined, giving you insight on the optimal times to share your content.

Tweriod is free (with slightly limited features) for analyzing up to 5,000 followers.  If you’re just getting started, the free version should suit you perfectly.

Tweriod markets itself to work alongside Buffer, which I have been making use of, but the information the program offers can act as a guideline that you can use with any other sharing app.

Maybe in your dream world, you have a whole marketing team devoted to sharing your business’ message with your loyal fans.  But for now, you’re it.  Running a business means wearing a lot of different hats - perhaps juggling customer service, personnel, book keeping -  in addition to trying to keep up with your fans on social media sites.  With all those tasks to consider, finding ways to save time is key.  Lucky for you, there are several great tools available to make your social media marketing more efficient!

Buffer is a popular app that allows you to compose and schedule your tweets or Facebook posts ahead of time.  There is a lot to love about Buffer, but the biggie is the amount of time it can save you.  Instead of making time throughout the day to stay involved and share things on social media sites, you can prepare a few days’ worth of content in one sitting.  Type them into Buffer, they’ll be added to your queue.

Buffer also provides you with the analytics for each tweet.  See how many clicks it got, how many potential viewers it had, along with retweets, mentions and favorites - all from your Buffer dashboard.

After trying a few similar programs, I decided to try Buffer myself.  I’ve been using it for a few days now, and have found it to be user-friendy, intuitive, and a very helpful tool.  Take one thing off your daily to-do list, and download Buffer to make your social media marketing a little easier!

(Source: ohsobeautifulpaper.com)

Social Media Examiner just released their 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, packed with information about how marketers are using social media as well as some projections about the future of the field.  (You can view the full report here.)

Rohit Bhargava over at Ragan’s PR Daily interpreted the survey, and reached some interesting conclusions in his blog post, “Report: No. 1 Social Media Question: How Do I Measure?”

For me, the biggest take-away was that for all the hype that goes into measurement (which is an essential component of effective social media marketing), content and strategy have fallen to the wayside.  Having a well thought out strategy for your marketing program - specific goals, and an outline for how to reach them - will keep you on track, save you time, and give you a better results.  (Identifying the results you want will bring the results you want!)

Additionally, time and time again we’ve seen that content is king when it comes to successful social media marketing.  (That phrase in itself has become a sort of slogan for marketers.)  Create content that supports your mission and engages your audience, and watch the word spread!