Why engagement is the future of social media networking.

The social media landscape has changed drastically over the past decade. Social media used to be a platform for sharing content to drive people to your website. But these days people are given more content than they can absorb. With that being said it is more important now than ever that your content is engaging and captures attention.

The days of just sending mass messages are gone, today it’s more about creating a few individual and unique interactions with your users. Here are the main reasons we believe engagement is so important.

Organic reach and referral traffic are on the decline.

Logic dictates that consumers are eventually over saturated with information as more and more posts are made. Realistically they don’t have the time to even click on all the posts that stand out to them. As a result, businesses that heavily rely on social media to drive traffic to their sites are taking a very sizable hit.

A common remedy for this would be to focus more on creating content that resonates with its viewer instead of focusing on the volume of your content and posts. Connecting with the user is imperative in creating a relationship that will last.

Social media is becoming more popular.

To achieve the best results with social media, marketing organizations have to find the balance between posting on their news feed (the traditional way of messaging for most) and more personalized one-on-one messaging. Social media has become the preferred way for it’s users to connect with and follow their favorite brands.

It’s in our nature to be drawn to things and brands that we can connect with not only through values but through direct communication. Use social media to create posts that start a conversation with your users. The key to social media engagement is creating a long term relationship with your users.

Customers are using social media to reach brands.

There are increasing numbers of people going onto social media accounts to reach their favorite brands either for support or to just connect. People are commenting on pages and posts along with sending direct messages.

Helping customers on social media is a great opportunity for brands to publicly show how great they are at making sure their customers are happy. Being responsive on social media will increase the chance of a customer purchase and start to build a long term relationship with your customers, while ignoring them can show disconnect and reduce their brand loyalty.

Social networking sites themselves are reacting to these trends as well. Twitter now lets people direct message businesses without the business having to follow them and you can send auto responses and welcome messages. On Facebook you can set up automatic replies to FAQs.

Algorithms love engagement.

The level of engagement on your posts is solely determined by the quality of your posts. Social networking sites will promote posts that prove engagement.

If there are a lot of people engaging and reacting to your posts, this will tell the social media algorithms that your post is interesting and useful, which will boost the likelihood people outside your network will view it. On Facebook and Instagram engagement is based on likes, comments, and shares; on Twitter it is based on retweets and likes. Furthermore, the algorithms will also take in account the quantity of negative and positive interactions with this post.

On the other hand, if people are choosing to hide your post or aren’t interacting with it whatsoever, algorithms will assume it’s irrelevant and will show it to less people. This further reiterates the original point that sending out generic or static marketing messages is no longer effective.

The value of engagement.

Creating engaging posts and providing swift one-on-one support increases brand loyalty, customer retention and ultimately increases sales revenue. Positive engagement will position your brand as reliable and trustworthy, making people more likely to recommend you to their friends and family.

If you’re considering using social media as part of your digital marketing efforts or are looking to revamp how you use social media for your organization, get in touch. Airglow Digital offers bespoke social media marketing packages that are affordable and suited to your needs.