Different applications require different approaches in terms of social media engagement but we can’t forget ‘Content is King.’
The number one rule of content is to create engagement by the viewer/reader in order to create viral traffic, shares, likes and followers to your brand, cause or company.
Content must evoke strong positive emotions particularly humor, joy, interest, anticipation and trust. Gauge for yourself the responses on your social media when you post a negative remark versus a positive one. Every troll in the world will lambaste you for a negative remark and you will be in a constant effort to defend yourself or get yourself deeper into a conversation you never wanted.
People love to share things they like and activities they are doing in their life. They love to share images (43%), opinions (26%), status updates (26%) and personal recommendations (25%) so you can see how important these are to brand awareness.
In my management of the social media campaign for a Vancouver Mayoralty candidate, I need to inspire trust, reach into the voters hearts and answer questions that are important to them. Wai Young is an able and qualified candidate. With her background as a former Member of Parliament in Ottawa, her message is more important than her already established name recognition. Personal stories, accomplishments and facts are the important aspects of her candidacy.
Managing the social media/investor relations for a lithium property, One World Lithium (CSE:OWLI), has it’s own unique issues. Compliance, compliance, compliance must be adhered to so facts trump everything else. The story is the method to get the word out and must be compelling and sincere to overcome the milieu.
Whether it’s politics, mining or a personal blog there are different types of social media that drive engagement by your viewers.
Promotion
From client testimonials to discounts on products, social media is king. People are much more inclined to purchase online when given others opinions and recommendations on the product. One bad review will often kill a purchase.Using webinars is a great way to promote a product or service but it is further along the engagement ladder after acquiring the prospective customer’s interest.
Relationship
A company can build a client base by establishing a relationship with them from the outset. Behind the scenes video and inside information about the company’s employees and customers make for a more trusting position. People love to see that companies have issues and overcome them. It also allows the viewer to become part of the company for a brief time.
Product reviews are effective as long as they are consistently 4-5 stars. Many companies have fallen victim of mob mentality by not knowing their ‘Yelp’ scores. I’ve seen restaurants close their doors without understanding why customers were unhappy. If only they had read reviews!
Education
I love this form of content. I have made my reputation by providing start-ups and entrepreneurs ‘how to’ books and articles to make life a little bit easier for them. The best way to a consumer’s heart is to give them quality educational content. Most of us use our blogs to express ourselves as well as offering tips and tricks. I often think YouTube was built on the ‘how to’ market.
I love using case studies of business with which I have done work that shows prospective clients my process and results. Case studies add credibility to both my techniques and work so it is very important to the overall content strategy of any social media platform. If you’ve done an exceptional job for a client shout it from the rooftops.
Conversation
Ah, the art of conversation. I thought people were crazy texting all the time rather than voice communication but I’ve fallen into texting as well. Conversation in terms of social media is the use of polls, captions for photos and questions. For any of you who use Wikipedia for all of your worldly information you should try Quora as an alternative. While anonymous editors create Wikipedia, Quora gives diverse responses to questions posed by users who sign their name to the answer. You can agree with the responses or not but typically you will find the response that rings true for you. Why does Quora work? People love giving their opinion.
Inspiration
When I first started using Twitter more than 12 years ago I found that the content that got the most RT’s and overall attention and ‘likes’ were quotes. This simple form of content has never waivered over the years and I can be assured that if I tweet an inspirational or a business quote it relates to a lot of people who love to share it.
People also love facts. For a recent cobalt campaign I wrote out 100 interesting facts about cobalt and posted them regularly to Twitter. Who would have thought there were that many interesting facts about cobalt. Like quotes they were often Retweeted and people appreciated learning something they didn’t know.
Entertainment
So, you’re trying to get people to follow you, sell something or promote a brand. It needs to be entertaining. Even the inspirational content needs to have an entertainment factor to it.
Informational content combined with relevant images or videos will enhance the content and make people want more. Infographics have become a new form of image production in that it takes text and turns it into images. When you consider different cultures and languages, the universality of images overcomes these barriers. According to Slideshare in 2013, Infographics were proven to get more engagement than presentations and documents.
GoPro has taken user-generated content to a whole different plane. They utilize GoPro camera users videos for their advertising. Not only are there a lot of talented amateur users but it’s interesting and costs GoPro nothing to showcase that talent.
The takeaways from understanding content and getting it out to your prospective clients, consumers for promotion, sales and branding is that people want a genuine engagement with people they work with and want a feel-good experience.
The mantra in my book, “Social Media Rockstar” on Amazon, is engagement, engagement and engagement. If you touch people in a way that they remember you when you want them to you have done your job of creating quality, relevant content that sells.
Go forth and Engage!
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