Companies can stay connected with customers, find new prospects and gather real-time feedback through social media engagement. And many companies have gained even more appreciation for how social media provides direct connection to customers during the COVID pandemic, when many other communications channels were limited.
These companies found that it’s not enough to simply collect followers. In 2021, companies should plan to actively engage social media users who are already following the company’s social channels. Engaging with your company’s key audiences are the key to building a lasting (and fruitful) relationship.
To do this, you need to understand who follows your company’s social media channels, then develop a strategy to better engage them. In turn, this social media engagement can make a tremendous difference for your company’s understanding of its customers.
Five keys to better social media engagement in 2021:
Evaluate your audience
Understand who follows your company on each of your platforms before making any changes to your social strategy. Use each social media platform’s built-in analytics platforms to understand who follows your company. Look at the gender, age, job and other details to better understand who follows your company, and in turn, determine how they prefer to communicate.
Analyze your content’s performance
Analyzing the performance of your content shows you how many people are seeing and interacting with your content. Some questions to consider as you evaluate your content:
- What performed well?
- What post piqued your followers’ interest and attention?
- Do shorter or longer posts drive social media engagement?
- What feedback did the post spark?
This information tells you what drives action and engagement across each of your social channels. It very likely will be different for Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.
Set priorities
Different social media platforms can have different purposes for your company. It’s important to set a purpose for each channel, and it will often be different for each channel. For example, B2B companies may prioritize LinkedIn, while B2C companies may favor Facebook or Instagram, based on each company’s goals.
For companies looking to hire in 2021, it may make sense to put enhanced effort toward LinkedIn where job seekers are and Instagram, which can showcase corporate culture.
Pay attention to timing
Each social media platform performs differently depending on the day and time. Look at the data to see when the most people are interacting with your posts, which could help in developing social strategy, including the best days and times to post on each social media platform.
Ask questions
Asking questions to get crowdsourced answers can help you get to know your audience. This could include polls and quizzes that will pull audience insights and give you the chance to hear directly from your audience on what matters to them.
The bottom line: Knowing who follows your channels is essential to successfully marketing on social media. Audiences change by platform, and who you think is on a platform could be wrong.
Learn about your social audience members and then create a plan to develop content based on your followers, their interests and needs, balancing them with your company’s priorities. This is the key to social media engagement that leads to results.
B2 frequently works with companies to create annual marketing & communications plans and chart out 2021 strategies. Reach out to see how we can help you.