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There’s no doubt about it: Social media is hard work. Maybe one reason is that there are so many people using social networks. That includes 2 billion monthly users on Facebook, 1.5 billion on YouTube, 700 million on Instagram, 328 million on Twitter, and 255 million on Snapchat (and that’s not even considering LinkedIn, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others).
Looking at that huge pool of users, it’s easy to think that you can get more social media followers at the drop of a hat — and that might be true. However, increasing your followers is the easy part; it’s retaining them and turning them into advocates who will promote your business that’s the big challenge.
Brands that have tried too hard to turn followers into advocates can even come off as inauthentic, something that can ruin your brand, as business strategist Jay Baer points out. There’s a fine line between trying too much and trying too little — which could also yield no results.
So how do you influence your followers without, well, bothering them and turning them off? How can you encourage them to spread the word about your brand without blatantly asking them to do so?
There’s no tried-and-true way to create brand advocates, but here are a few tips to get you thinking about social media tactics to include in your strategy:
Remember Oreo’s “dunk in the dark” tweet during a short blackout at Super Bowl XLVII in 2013? Those few simple words turned the marketing world upside down. All of a sudden, social media marketers everywhere thought, “We need to post in real time, and we need to be funny!”
It’s natural to want to piggyback off of successful marketing efforts, especially when we see something like Oreo’s tweet that got a lot of publicity. What’s even more natural, and arguably more beneficial for your brand, is posting content that reflects your company’s culture, your business goals, and what your target audience wants — this last point being the most relevant.
Before you post content on social media, ask yourself, “Does this make sense for our company — and does it meet my audience’s needs?” To find out what your audience wants, the best thing to do is to mine your data for insights.
Your data about your social audience is key to figuring out how to move them from day-to-day engagement and retention to advocacy. One way to encourage advocacy is to find the followers who engage with you the most. Your data will tell you that.
Imagine that @NortherTrailOutfitters_Fan_1, for example, and many similar followers interact with more than half of your social posts. Your CRM data might even show you that these followers have all made purchases in the past six months. By segmenting these members of your social audience, you can target them specifically on social media.
How you target them is up to you, but this could be as simple as getting alerts when these fans mention you on a social network, click on a post, or like a post. Taking this a step further with the help of a data management platform (DMP), you could even deliver personalized digital ads to them that align with their behaviors on social.
When you give influencers personalized, relevant attention, there’s a good chance they’ll continue to engage with your brand and even share it more often.
Let’s take data one step further to send even more personalized incentives. This doesn’t mean trading a 15%-off coupon for a “like” on Facebook, which, by the way, is like paying someone an allowance to be your friend. Instead, this refers to actually sending a unique promotional offer via direct message. So, while a solid foundation of data can allow you to automate the delivery of digital ads, a direct message on social media adds a more human element to the mix. If you’re really dedicated — and have the time and resources to make this type of interaction happen — the business benefits could be huge.
Advocates, obviously, love to share their experiences.
Customers want to hear what other people have to say about companies. In fact, Pew Research Center says that “82% of U.S. adults at least sometimes read online customer ratings or reviews before purchasing items for the first time.”
With so many people trusting reviews as a good source of information, you have the opportunity to make it easy for your social followers to leave feedback. Facebook includes its own easy, five-star rating system for company pages, but you also have to consider how you’ll encourage followers to review you elsewhere. Including calls to action or links in social profiles might encourage people to add reviews (but please don’t say “Like us on Facebook” anymore).
As an additional benefit, customer reviews are important tools in your overall marketing strategy, and they contribute to better local search rankings.
(If you’re looking for more insight into how to use reviews for more believable marketing, listen to this episode on The Marketing Cloudcast.)
Social media marketing is one small part of moving engaged followers to advocacy, so it shouldn’t be an isolated effort. Consider influencing fans on social media to engage with other channels, such as email. You can promote a monthly email newsletter of yours on social networks. Likewise, you can add calls to action leading to social channels in your email newsletter.
While this is just one example of how you can influence your social media followers to engage with you in new ways, there are many other approaches to going cross-channel and designing customer journeys.
As customers become more influential on social media channels, marketers have to start making deliberate strides to reach and engage them, without coming off as impersonal and pushy. While it’s a challenge, start with these tips, and map out a clear social media strategy that is relevant for your company and your audience.
For more information about social media marketing, download our e-book with 50 social media best practices.
