This is part 3 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Engagement – the things you do once you have an audience.

This is actually the step where you get permission to move to the next step. First and foremost you must ensure that you deliver on what you promised in your acquisition strategy. If once someone has started to engage with you and they do not get what they expected they will leave or worse yet tune out. Just as the advent of timeshifted TV has allowed consumers to skip commercials if you don’t deliver value your audience will abandon you as well.

Key Questions for Engagement

• How can I add value to people that follow me or the audience that I gain in the permission marketing space? (email in addition to social is permission based)
• What are the acceptable forms of engagement in this channel?
• What is my engagement schedule?
• Who is responsible for engagement items?
• What are the unique ways I can engagement this channel that will set me or my company apart?
• What does my target market expect from me?
• What are my competitors doing?

Engagement Examples

Engagement can arguably be the most important step. Without proper engagement you simply would not be effective when moving onto the next element—monetization. The people and companies that successfully engage can then prime their audience towards offers, purchasing, and other elements of the sales funnel. Below I’ve included a few great examples of companies that are engaging within social media.

Steel Buildings are Social?

SteelMaster a manufacturer of prefabricated steel buildings engages Facebook in an unusual way. You wouldn’t guess that there would be much affinity to a steel building. First they found that Facebook is a great place to post pictures of customer’s buildings.

These pictures not only engage existing customers—they also tell a story to potential customers what is possible. Since the backbone of Facebook is pictures this plays well in this platform.

They also use Twitter to get exposure and create demand in vertical markets they had little traction in, such as chicken farmers and woodworkers.

Watch a Video Get a Free Night

Rogers Smith Hotel uses twitter to give away free nights of stay (click to see tweet below).

Even Paint Can Engage?

IdeaPaint does a great job with their blog. This is the launching pad of their engagement plan. IdeaPaint turns virtually anything you can paint into a high-performance dry-erase surface—every 3 year olds fantasy.

Their outreach typically starts with a great video post that shows the product in action. Telling a story each time it also gives potential customers what is possible with their unique product.  From there they engage within YouTube, Twitter and Facebook connecting with their core market.

Wait a Refrigerator?

Subzero (maker of appliances and high end refrigerators) whose core customer is a woman age 45 or older focuses on the essential element of adding value to its affluent customers’ busy lives. They do this by sharing seasonal recipes, wine pairings, and cooking tips. They also spotlight hot kitchen designers. Facebook is the third-top-referring site to SubZero.com.

Sub-Zero then engages their audience rewarding their affluent followers with exclusive news, discounts, videos, and pictures. This gave the follower the feeling of being on the inside. One recent question posed by SubZero has garnered over 200 responses or close to a hundred for the simply question what’s for dinner tonight?

This is part 1 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.

We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

Social Media Engagement

Social media is a new paradigm of marketing, it’s requires a different approach to marketing. It’s ‘always on’ and contains elements of instantaneous communication. What we call social media should be more accurately termed social communication. Humans are social animals but what changes is how we communicate with each other. Social networking allows us to communicate instantaneously across the world in a matter of seconds. It also offers a direct one on one or one to many connections that has never existed before.

Setting Goals

Before embarking on any social media marketing campaigns, it is essential to set your goals and define your prospects or target audience. Without a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach, your promotional campaigns will not be focused and the results may be fragmented and weak.

What are the goals of your organization? Do you want to build your brand and increase the number of targeted visitors to your website?

Do you want to improve communication among customers, employees and other stakeholders? Do you want to strengthen your relationships and increase profitability?

Determining exactly what you want to accomplish through a social media strategy will drive prioritization of your actions.

Family, Friends and Fun

If there was one thing that is important to know about social media it is this–the core reason most people spend time within social media is to connect with friends and family.

Consumers put social media squarely in the entertainment column. The old interruption approach to marketing simply does not work within this channel of communication.

This means that people spend time to talk to friends, family, associates and have fun. Knowing this one element will ensure that you have success in your efforts with social engagement. Keeping this in front of your mind and interactions will be the key to making sure your communication, updates, and messages resonate with your audience.

Intent and Selling

create interest in our product or service. Very few people log into a social network to purchase something. The purchase or decision to purchase or even consider a product is a byproduct of the activity.

I Don’t Have the Time

This is the number #1 item of feedback I get when I present the best practices to marketing in social media. It usually goes something like… “I’m already busy enough” or “we are bogged down with day to day stuff already, how do we add this on top of it?”.

Here is my quick and easy answer…

First, just like everything else in your business if you find it worthwhile and it generates results you will find time. What we really are talking about is priorities. The second thing is focusing on getting strong foundation in place. What follow below is the core elements to a successful social engagement plan. Also some examples on how other companies are making it work for them.

Who Owns Social Media?

The short answer is every department in your organization can benefit from social engagement. Depending on the size of your organization different departments or people will play a more central role. Collaboration is the key. When the IT department can talk to the PR department and when the R&D side learns that they can access the vast element of general knowledge, real time conversations, and actual thoughts of the target market that’s when the proverbial light bulb flips on.

Out with Interruption Advertising

Shoving marketing messages down people’s throat doesn’t make much sense, so you have to jump in and accept the good with the bad. Things may blow up, as they did with Southwest and Nestle recently, but the two-way communication channel you can build up far outweighs [the potential for negative consequences]. Social is not just a marketing channel – it’s PR, product development, customer service and even HR.

You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.

How many friend and friend details can we possibly track? With how many friends – or brands – can we sustain meaningful engagement? Using a loose definition of “friend” including those whose updates or status we follow on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and other social networks or communities, the attention required to manage all those updates has grown in multiple and exponential ways.

So what does this mean for you if you are trying to a build a meaningful relationship with your target market? Here’s a few tips to keep focused on what is important as more people start using social as a channel and more consumers start tuning it out.

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