Using Social Media As A Customer Engagement Tool

The social media landscape has truly matured as a marketing platform over the past decade or so. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn provide marketers with a diverse range of tools with an equally distinctive content medium to experiment with their marketing campaigns. The nature of the medium also makes social media channels the ideal platform to engage with customers.

Pick the right platform

The first and foremost step in effective customer engagement over social media is to pick the right platform. YouTube is ideal for long form video content while Instagram works for visual engagement. LinkedIn is perfect for a business audience while Facebook brings together all these benefits into one platform with the highest engagement levels among social networks.

There are two factors to consider while picking the social media platform for your campaign. Firstly, the social media tool must be popular among users who fall in your target demographic profile. Secondly, you must have a strategy to engage with your audience in the specific medium. For instance, if you are in an industry where photos and videos don’t help, then Instagram is perhaps not the right platform. However this is not always applicable, and it brings us to the next point.

Building an engagement strategy

Finding the right engagement strategy is a critical component of a successful social media campaign. A target demographic that is highly visible on Instagram needs to be targeted with visual content even if your industry may not be suited for the platform. This can be done by picking a strategy that has a high VRIN score (Value, Rare, Inimitable, Non-substitutable), according to Tai Lopez. Tai, who is engaged with more than 20 multi-million dollar businesses says that a strategy or personality that adds unique value and is rare creates a unique experience for your target audience. Add to this the fact that your campaign is inimitable and non-substitutable helps marketers build a competitive advantage over competition.

A good example of a campaign with high VRIN score is the ‘Will it blend?’ campaign from Blendtec. These videos targeted Youtube visitors with a campaign that was unique and also drove home the message about the capability of Blendtec. This created a high level of engagement and brand awareness among the viewers which was the sole objective of the campaign.

Supplement your social media efforts

The success of a social media campaign depends on the mileage that your campaign receives in terms of customer engagement. It may be tough to meet your campaign goals by targeting one platform alone. The third step of your social media campaign should thus be to make use of all the other social media tools at your disposal to drive engagement on your core platform. For instance, for a campaign like ‘Will it blend?’, the marketers could make use of Facebook to build virality to the YouTube campaign. This way, target customers who are not active on the core social media platform too shall be exposed to your campaign and may engage with it.

Customer engagement is a vital component of marketing and social media provides the perfect platform for businesses to communicate and engage with customers. With the right strategy, marketers can create unique campaigns that will not only engage their target audience, but also create brand awareness and loyalty among their users.