All social media sites are actively engaged in successfully integrating businesses into their sites. Businesses, while all taking different approaches to use social media sites, are all seeking to find new customer engagement initiatives to improve their performance. They seek to engage their customers (both new and old) through two-way conversation and soliciting opinions and feedback.

customer engagement initiatives
Customer engagement initiatives.

Let’s examine some of the more popular customer engagement initiatives many businesses are using:

Soliciting Opinions

       What charities to support

       Asking favorite flavors or products

       What they would like to see on social media pages

       Likes and dislikes

           Collaborating on product/service design

Are you one that believes that creativity can be learned? We are among that group. We also believe in suggestions for innovative thinking can boost team creativity through effective collaboration.

Through a series of sparks and not a single flash of insight. Certainly our way of thinking.

Voting on Most Favorite Things

      A moment in Michael Jordan career

      Most scary roller coaster

      Donuts

      New design features

Co-creation of Products / Services

      Ad Campaigns

      Outfit design combinations

      Facebook page

Our job as marketers is to do the hard work of finding and nurturing charismatic ideas we can be proud of. One place to start is to look at the ideas you’re trying to spread.

Consider whether they’re charismatic enough to earn the effort you’re putting into them–and if not, how to replace them with ideas that are.

Pictures of Customers with Products

New Application Introduction / Usage

      Creating customized holiday cheer cards

      Ordering products (even for local delivery)

      Local store locator

Use of Videos

use of videos
The use of videos captures the imagination best.

      Live events, such as fashion shows

      Product demo’s, do it yourself tips

      Game clips

      Local, regional activities

The truth is that there is no one “true” path to new ideas because innovation, at its core, is about solving problems and every enterprise chooses different problems to solve.

While IBM might be happy to have its scientists work for decades on some arcane technology and Google gladly allows its employees to pursue pet projects, those things probably wouldn’t fly at Amazon. However, the one thing that all great innovators have in common is that culture and practice are deeply intertwined.

That’s what makes them so hard to copy. Anybody can write a six-page memo or start meetings with a reading period. It’s not those specific practices, but the commitment to the values they reflect, that has driven Amazon’s incredible success.

Promotions

      Weekly giveaways

      Coupons

      Free products to entice Facebook fan signup

      Special rates for Facebook fans

Content

      Menus 

content
Be creative with content.

New product introduction

      Share product/articles from magazines

      Targeted messages to customer groups/segments

          Special business events

There is considerable creativity in the use of social media by many businesses, with very good engagement results.

The bottom line

What we found most interesting in this concept is its simplicity. Making the simple complicated is commonplace … but making the complicated simple, awesomely simple is real creativity!

Lots of ideas are being generated and the process is definitely great at customer engagement. We believe its success will generate more business experimentation in crowdsourcing.

Companies deserve lots of credit and kudos for pushing the envelope.

If you are not taking advantage of social media customer engagement, you are missing a great opportunity to create/build customer relationships for you and your brand. Why not put some of these ideas to use and gain valuable feedback and customer insights?

If your business is using social media, are there results that you would like to share?

If you a customer of one or more businesses using social media, what are your likes and dislikes of their initiatives? What would you like to see more of?

Call Digital Spark Marketing for a free social media marketing strategy today. We can offer you some good tips on how to creatively engage your customers. For more reading on creative marketing tips, click here.

Here are some additional resources from our library.

7 Ways to Create a Customer Service Evangelist Business

Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics

10 Entrepreneur Lessons You Need to Know