Beyond the Metrics: How Engagement Can Transform Your Social ROI

The term “engagement” is used often in social media marketing circles and widely mentioned in blogs, posts, webinars and so on. However, few companies really know how to do it.

Brands may post about new products, services, and informational updates, but they hardly engage with their customers and wonder why their social media metrics are not working.

Engagement is not only a buzzword. It is what makes your brand more human and, well, engaging. The usual calls-to-actions of “Like Our Facebook Page” or “Leave Us a Review on Yelp” will not be as effective as you would like. A lot of businesses have struggled in social media because of a weak approach that does not consider the users on their social media channels or even no plan at all.

Growing the ROI from your social media will help boost audience interest, sales, and revenue. Not prioritizing social media could be the reason you are losing out on potential followers and customers–not something you want to do when there is so much competition online for followers and sales. To be successful in social marketing, you need to use these tactics to increase your brand’s engagement with your audience.

Social Plugins

There are many social plugins for social media engagement. Facebook Share API enables people to post updates and links directly on their Facebook pages from the website.

Therefore, as customers access your website, they are encouraged to post directly on their Facebook profile, which enhances audience engagement. This is helpful when a new user enters your site via the shared link.

Audience Interaction

Engage your followers by asking questions that appeal to their need to respond, inviting suggestions and comments, and creating polls while also maintaining your brand’s value and agenda. Satisfy the competitive nature of your followers by using social media contests. 

Respond actively or have members of your team answer comments and messages on your social channels. You may also get into relevant conversations around your company that is already taking place and express your thoughts and views on certain popular topics.

Many social posts that are primarily call-to-action or commercial posts do not attract many social media users. Your followers want to see company interaction and interesting posts. If you want to maintain high audience engagement for your brand, try to go for a ratio of 20% promotional posts and 80% useful content.

User Generated Content (UGC)

Integrating UGC into social media ads and campaigns provides significant results and can also make the ROI stronger. Don’t neglect to monitor your social media efforts!

To see why, conduct a quick A/B test of a brand image against a UGC image from a customer to see which one is performing better. A big aspect of growing your social ROI is testing often and finding out what works so you can see the results and use them from now on.

Make a branded hashtag and invite followers to post their own images and videos using your products and hashtag. With their permission, you can use these to share on your social media channels, resulting in higher rates of interest and increased revenues

Useful Content

Growing engagement and ROI on social media may be as easy as producing useful content. Content marketing produces over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs less than 62 percent. Many businesses use this content as the center of their overall digital marketing strategies. Useful content could include informative images, video tutorials, live streams, pre-recorded webinars, infographics, downloadable PDFs of guides, e-books, mini-courses, and more.

Go through your competitors’ channels and websites to see their content. Ask your followers on the content they want to see from your company via a poll or a Q&A on your social media channels. Test which content is popular with your followers to make more of them for the future.

These social media tactics can help to increase your social media ROI if they make sense for your business and brand. Social media can be a huge plus for your customers, brand recognition, and can even add to the revenue. Consistency is key, and engaging with active followers with content, share, and comment is crucial to your brand’s success. Seeing the story beyond the metrics, optimizing content, and creating a loyal social media following are perfect ways to get your social media channels working.

Communicating with customers is important. Take this as your opportunity to connect with your customers and expand the horizons of your business. Social media can work wonders for your business.