By Genae Girard
Cathy, a small furniture business owner, spent a lot of money on the front end of a social media campaign for her store. She set out to incrementally build her following on Facebook, Twitter and her blog. She slowly built a following with her in-store business as well as her distribution nationally. She carefully crafted flyers to send with deliveries, an email campaign and newsletters. Her followers steadily grew until she hit a plateau. She wondered why it took so much effort to build her following, just for her drop out rate to steadily increase. What Cathy didn’t realize is while it’s important to build a following on social media sites, it’s just as important to keep that following engaged.
In order to keep your customers engaged, you must create an emotional bond in order to keep their attention. The average customer is exposed to hundreds of messages everyday on their computer, on their phones and on TV. They have become artificially attention deficit disordered, and that doesn’t help your advertising brand. In order to be successful in the social media market you must engage the customer. Cathy can do this by turning to the creative spirit of the company and think outside the box using the following strategies:
1) Create great content. If Cathy posted interesting antidotes about the history of special furniture items she carries, or behind the scenes information on beautiful rooms she creates for clients, or on expert furniture repair techinques, it is sure to create more buzz.
2) Consider adding video. The average consumer responds to video better than written content. If Cathy showed a video of an inside look at how she shops for the best deals at the High Point and Las Vegas Furniture shows, that is more engaging for her followers than the average post. She could also post video on how to spot quality construction in dining rooms sets. The options are endless.
3) Add humor to get the customers laughing. If a group of employees decide to have a mattress stacking contest (with your approval), snap a picture and post it across your social media network. Ask customers to submit pictures of the ugliest sofa, chair or occasional table and do the same. Ask your employees to write down funny anecdotes or humorous stories about decorating.
4) Look at your competition. Look for the top 10 competitors that you have in social media. Keep an eye on what they are posting and how many followers they have. Then develop your content in a more interesting and out of the box way from what they are doing. Do it faster, more cleaver and better.
5) Look for other companies that are a good fit to team up with. Make an agreement to swap content on each other sites so that you can take advantage of co-marketing. This could be another manufacturer or service that complements your business. Take advantage of the communities that have already been built and cross-pollinate them through your posts.
6) Look to younger employees in your company that may be on the pulse of social media. Put them in charge of reporting to you once a week about what the buzz is in the social media realm. Have them come up with different ideas, promotions or creative posts of interest and test them out in the market.
All of the content-rich aspects of social media will attract, but more importantly keep, your customers watching your brand grow. Standing out in the market place is becoming even more important as competition is always knocking at the social media door. Do it better, be more nimble and you will catch your customers sticking around to see what is next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Genae Girard is a speaker, author and entrepreneur. She is the founder of www.BeyondtheBoobieTrap.com, an online social media tribe of over 23,000 breast cancer survivors and regularly speaks on the topics of women in leadership and building a tribe. She is also the author of “Off the Rack: Chronicles of a Thirty-Something, Single, Breast Cancer Survivor.” For inquiries, email: info@BeyondtheBoobieTrap.com or call 512-796-1618.