Social media has taken up very unique and important role in marketing landscape. Now a days for a business to succeed, a good website is not just enough but a well managed social media is necessary. It has become imperative to start capitalizing on social media. Your social media is like the digital storefront, giving a chance to directly interact with the customers. It has become compelling to engage huge customer base through your social media accounts. Regular monitoring and engaging of social media can build good reputation for the business and also provide valuable insights into customer habits and preferences. Engaging in social can solidify relationship with customers and establish a more direct connection with your brand.

Dedicating necessary resources in the first and foremost step in social media engagement. Right resources and right planning including the desired out come will go a long way. There’s no substitute for regularly posting engaging, creative and relevant images that your audience loves. Lasting engagement naturally leads to followers. It is necessary to know if your social media efforts are successful unless a benchmark is set and metrics are measured to see if the whole engagement process is effective.

There are multiple ways and varied tools available to engage with customers through social media. Following are some of the ways as how to engage and maximize the benefits of social media presence of the company.

Regular content sharing: Steady and regular sharing of information/content creates awareness among the community and slowly builds your brand. The content strategy behind the social media campaign must be real and authentic and focus on the biggest differentiator you can offer. Your website tells your customers what you sell, but your social engagement should be able to tell your customers why they should buy it from you. Sharing your content on Google+, posting visual content on Pinterest, Instagram and youtube regularly will boost your brand image. And sharing the information the people want rather than just post some thing related to just what you do keeps people interested in your social media channels.

Follow conversations : Follow all conversations where your brand is mentioned. Find the brand advocates and carefully follow their posts. It helps to monitor the public perception of your brand by listening to the most talked about aspects of your company or brand. Finding the influencers for your brand and monitoring public perception is necessary to position the brand among the social media. Every conversation involving your brand should be followed and if any negative feedback should be handled at the earliest.

Getting customer feedback : You can do this by setting up Facebook poll or offer discounts and freebies. You can request users feedback on your campaigns and act according to the results. Questions and surveys targeted towards your community or customers can be a great way of getting valuable market research data, product feedback and information about the right direction for your business. Apart from these activities, there are a plenty of tools available to analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns and gauge customers’ reaction to particular post.

Know your competitor : It pays to know your competitors. Facebook fan count and the number of followers on twitter can give insight into the popularity garnered by the competitor. Observe and learn where they’re posting and how often they’re posting. Reading their blogs gives a general idea about the marketing advantages your competitors are gaining. Following the conversations involving your competitor will help some times to know your own position in popularity.