The art of improving business execution? Social media community engagement? What does it mean to your business? Dialog with customers for sure. What about reading your content and remembering? Appreciating your help? We believe it is all of these things. Especially knowing the art of improving business execution.
In the ever-changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media community engagement? Here we define social media community engagement as the process of gaining website customer traffic, attention, and interaction from customers through social media sites.
Have you ever thought about how to improve business execution and build positive social media community engagement?
This task starts with what customers want and need. Most people want to: feel needed, be valued, be appreciated, be fulfilled, share emotions, laugh and be happy, succeed and be inspired.
Make them feel something that feels unique to what other brands are blasting at them. To do this you must know who your community is. You must know how to catch and hold their attention.
So let’s examine our recommended game plan to build the art of improving business execution:
Win the first impression battle
What are you doing to make their first 30 seconds on your platform useful and worth their attention? If you can’t answer this question, you need to start here. First impressions are everything.
Be human
Humanize your brand. Realize that your brand is everything about you from what you tweet to how you respond to comments on Facebook.
Don’t hide your employees. Let them shine and be a living, breathing representation of your brand.
Be patient yet persistent
You aren’t going to capture your community overnight or on the first day you launch any social media site. Building and launching an integrated online community takes time.
Give yourself and your team the time to do it right. Have patience and persistence. Slow down and do it right and at the end of the game you’ll be the winner, guaranteed.
Connect emotionally
Make them feel. If you want to grab my attention on G+, make me laugh. Make me cry. Make me feel something, anything.
When I have a super busy day and I am replying to posts I have no choice due to the amount of them and time constraints but to choose where and when I am going to respond. It is an easy choice for me.
I respond to the people who grab my attention. The people who are nice, who make me feel good. The people who are genuine. The people who make me laugh, playing the emotional card.
Focus on relationships
The life of social media is people. People like you and me. People who laugh, cry, get mad, go crazy, get married, divorced, have kids, lose family members, win jobs, lose jobs, get promotions, win new clients, get new opportunities, have fun, play hard and work hard.
Offer value to the people in your community with the goal of building real relationships. Offer value and knowledge.
Inspire them
Inspire your communities to connect with you with a foundational goal of achieving their objectives. Inspire … Connect …Achieve. To do this you must know their objectives and goals. You must know them.
When you know your audience then you can know how you can help them be better. How can you help them learn? How can you help them go faster? Work smarter? Be smarter? Share more valuable information with their colleagues, clients, partners, and friends? Figure these answers out and use them to help.
Teach them
What knowledge can you share with them that will make them smarter? How can your knowledge drive real efficiency in their life or business?
Share your best stuff, not just the same old, same old you wrote two years ago that is overused and oversold, by everyone everywhere.
Make it easy
People want to connect. They don’t want to be spammed at every opportunity. Give them an opportunity to engage with you, your brand, and your team.
Great stories succeed because they are able to capture the imagination of large or important audiences. A great story is true. Not necessarily because it’s factual, but because it’s consistent and authentic.
Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on. Great stories make a promise. They promise a fun, safety or a shortcut. The promise needs to be bold and audacious. It’s either exceptional or it’s not worth listening to.
Be available. Open up your comment stream on your blog. Listen and be relevant and responsive.
Listen
The most important thing you can do to create a positive engagement is to listen carefully. Listen with a goal to understand. The bottom line, listen more than you talk. You’ll be amazed at how much you can learn about your audience when you shut up and listen.
In summary, building a positive social media community engagement is very similar to making friends. Keep it simple and be genuine.
The bottom line
Being social with a great positive engagement isn’t a new way of marketing; it’s a way of doing business. Follow these simple tips and you will be leading the way.
