Social media success means total engagement

     The success of any social media marketing campaign depends on total engagement. You can’t just post an article or a photo and then forget about it. Monitoring your social media sites on a daily basis is critical to your overall success. Your social media marketing strategy is designed solely to drive traffic to your site. If it is not doing that, you need to formulate a new strategy.

•  The one area that most small businesses seem to fall down on with regard to their social media marketing is responding to comments and reviews that are received at their various sites. In particular, negative comments tend to get ignored. This is a mistake. You must engage that unhappy comment and you must engage it quickly. Open up the conversation. Try and discover the source of their discontent and try to make it right. You won’t always make them happy but you must make the concerted effort.
• You need to be monitoring your sites so that you will have some context. You need to follow what is happening at your social media sites. Your social media marketing strategy depends on happy and engaged users who can be driven to your site so that your site can convert them to customers. Users of social media expect near immediate responses to their comments. You must get to them within the hour or the consequences may become out of your control. Negative publicity can spread quickly over social media channels. It happens every day.
• By engaging with the negative comments as soon as you can, you will accomplish a couple of things. First, it demonstrates that your company actually cares about its users and customers. It, also, shows that you want to clarify things with this user and with everyone else. Your aim is to engage and to make them happy that you have done so. Never get involved in an argument and never berate the user who has posted a negative comment. Address their concerns as honestly and as quickly as you can and then move on without any drama.
• You can, if you have to, take the negative engagement private. No need for the entire world to follow the entire exchange. In addition, never ignore those users who love you. If you are getting strong and positive comments, you need to respond in kind to them also. Perhaps even offer them some manner of discount, coupon, or gift. Your social media marketing success depends on engaging everyone and giving everyone a reason to click through to your site. Good news spreads quickly out on social media, too.

The success of your social media marketing campaigns depends on you monitoring your sites on a continuous and daily basis. It means updating your content on a daily basis if you can. It means giving potential customers a peek at the behind the scenes activity of your business. It means allowing them to get to know you. It means engagement.