Do you have a social media site that just seems empty? Maybe you have a lot of followers, but none of them really reach out to you or engage in your content. If this is the case, you might need to take a look at social media activation. With this method, you can turn those followers that are just lurking into real and true fans that like, comment, share, and interact with you and your content.
What is Social Media Activation?
Social media activation is when you take current followers of your platforms and turn them from people who just follow to those who act. Activating your potential customers encourages people who already follow you, who already like you, to act and reach out to you about your product or services. Social media activation is a more creative approach than other tactics, helping you get more people involved. Interactions with people already familiar with or interested in your company are called warm interactions, whereas cold interactions are when you reach out to people who haven’t heard of you before. Warm interactions are the ones that are most often able to turn into a sale or inquiry on a product. Social media activation is just encouraging those warm potential customers to actually become customers. They also might come to your exhibit booth the next time you’re at a trade show to see what you can do.
How It Helps You
The purpose of social media activation is to bring a more active approach to how your business interacts with its customers. If you’re able to get more people who already know you to make a sale, you increase your bottom line. That’s not the only thing, though; if you become more engaged on your social media, there is a chance that people will view your response time as good customer service. One of the best ways to take on social media activation is to create an experience for people. In doing so, you reach out beyond the idea of gaining likes and follows, and you create a space for people to associate your brand with enjoyment.
Attract
One of the first things you need to do before you can even start with social media activation is to attract a big enough audience. Once you have a good audience that you can work with, then you can actually review your engagement and see where social media activation may help you. Some people hear the term social media activation and assume that they can start before they have a following. That’s not what this process is about at all; social media activation is the process of turning people who are already aware of you into customers. In doing so you encourage them to interact both online and potentially at your next trade show.
Purpose of This Step
In attracting people to your social media first, you’re automatically going to start seeing an increase in sales. These sales are important because they help nurse your bottom line while you prepare for social media activation. In this way, you’re attracting a large audience. You’re asking them to learn more about you, and you can, in time, see which people are or are not going to engage regularly. The main purpose of this first step is to build an audience you can then encourage to react and interact with you, increasing and activating your social media presence.
Engage
Next, you need to get your audience to engage you and your employees. When you’re trying to encourage engagement, there are a few different ways you can get them to engage. You can post content with engaging topics, respond to as many comments as you can, and encourage people to interact and engage with your posts. Engaging with your post will increase your social media activation because it will encourage your audience to actually interact with you, potentially encouraging them to eventually become a customer. Without engagement, you will have a difficult time getting your social media activation to be successful.
Purpose of This Step
The purpose of this step is to encourage the individuals on your social media site that are inactive to start reacting. Most people, once they like or follow a company, just see them passing on their social media feed and don’t react otherwise. They don’t like it; they don’t comment; they don’t interact with the post at all. When they don’t interact, they quickly forget about seeing you on their feed and go about their day. Getting them to react, though, gives them a little boost of serotonin, increasing the probability that they are going to remember you and possibly buy from you.
Bond
Bonding with your audience is another essential part of social media activation. When you finally start getting people to interact with your posts and take an interest in your business, it’s important that you keep up with the interactions. Once you start to get the engagement, you need to forge an emotional bond with the people that are interacting with you. Forging that bond with your audience is essential to ensure that you can maintain this level of engagement going forward. Start foraging a relationship with your audience and your potential customers as early as possible so you can give your social media activation the boost it needs.
Purpose of This Step
The purpose of this step is to secure a firm and regular engagement with your audience. If you have someone who is happy to be working with you, why wouldn’t you keep responding to them, teaching them, and working with them? Maintaining a bond is not only going to show your customers that you care about them but that you are easy to work with and that you run your business well. Social media activation can be a process, but once it’s complete, you can continuously encourage people as they come in to be active in the conversation. This encourages them to be more loyal customers to you and to continue coming back to you over and over again. They may refer you to other people as well, helping your business grow and thrive.
Once you start social media activation, it’s wise to keep it up, though you may eventually be able to tone down on how often you post to social media. Your community members won’t just start talking to you, but they’ll start talking to each other as well. When they start doing this is when you know you can pull back a little and reap the benefits of social media activation. If you’re looking for more information on this method, feel free to reach out to us today to learn how we can help you!