A social media engagement strategy is key to driving traffic and conversions on your website or blog. By actively engaging with your audience on social media, you can build relationships, increase brand awareness, and drive traffic to your site. To acheive these goals we need to implement an engagement strategy.
Identify your target audience
Whether you are a service provider or an e-commerce store and you think you have the most incredible offer, it is not likely going to get far if your feeding your content to the wrong audience.
Imagine trying to sell tutus to members of a motorbike gang - sounds impossible, am i right?
You might think, sure, then i’ll just target women and i’ll generate tons of leads and conversions. Sorry, but it’s not that simple.
It is important to find EXACTLY who is 100% eager to buy tutu’s from you. Using a target such as “women” is too broad! Really think about it, would mothers of boys be interested in purchasing tutu’s for their children? Maybe a couple, but not enough!
By researching demographics and psychographics you can narrow down your niche and find your ideal customer avatar:
Demographics
Age - How old are they?
Gender - What do they identify as?
Occupation - What are they doing for work? This is something they are doing very often so it is highly important to gain information on.
Income level - How much money are they earning? What can they afford?
Marital status - Are they married? dating? single?
These pieces of information are pretty obvious, however thorough research is required to ensure you are targeting the correct audience and therefore getting more traffic from your ideal audience.
Psychographics
Values - What are their values and beliefs?
Hobbies - What do they like doing on weekends?
Lifestyle - What does their daily routine consist of?
Personality - What kind of personality do they have?
Interests - What do they search for when they are online?
Behaviour - Where do they shop? Where to they eat? What do they watch on Netflix?
It might seem easy to just assume what your target audience values, what they do in their day, how they shop, where they shop from, what makes them happy etc. However, assumptions lead to crickets!
Where can I find information about my target audience?
Quora, Reddit and fb groups are excellent communities to hang out at to find this data. Put on your listening caps and really listen to how people are reacting in social groups.
Even better, you can ask these questions yourselves among those communities!
Create a list of keywords - by conducting keyword research
There’s so many things you can do with a list of relevant keywords, one of them being, driving more traffic to your website. Keyword research is critical in digital marketing, especially when you're trying to target your niche audience.
Once you find the answers to the questions in the previous step you can now come up with a whole lot of relevant keywords. I use what I call a Keyword Research Flower.
Pick a topic keywords and think of it as a category and place it in the centre or the "bud" of the flower. Then place keywords that are relevant to the petals of the flower. In the above example, I have used the keyword "flights" and thought of any search query that would have to do with my main keyword.
Pro Tip* When you are building your keyword research flowers, get out your notebook and section it into two columns with the following titles
What keywords can i use that will help me find these people?
What keywords will help people find me?
How will keyword research help me increase traffic?
These keywords can be used to search and actually target your ideal audience. It can also help improve your SEO if you use them more often in your website or blog by making it more searchable - as long as your content is relatable and has purpose.
How will keyword research help me find my target audience?
This question leads us to the next step of our engagement strategy.
Find those people and engage with them on Social Media
I always stress that the power of engagement is underestimated. There are people behind the brand and there are people behind those screens consuming content from those brands!
Now that you’ve found your ideal audience, and created a list of relevant keywords, you’re now ready to engage with them and nurture them in order to get traffic heading your way.
How will people know that your website, your shop or your blog exists when you’re not showing up?
Here’s how you can engage on each social media platform in order to generate more traffic to your website.
Enter your keywords in the search bar on each platform, find accounts or posts that pop up. Catch their attention by simply showing them some love and kill them with your kindness! And it’s safe to say you should expect the same!
Never neglect or forget those who have already interacted with you!
It is always good to make a habit of going back to see who interacted with your last post and show up in their notifications tabs too by interacting with their content in a genuine and meaningful way.
Personally, I like to save profile URLS on a weekly basis of the accounts i engage with, I make sure to check in with those who i’ve engaged with prior and show their most recent posts some love too!
The Rule Of Seven
Unfortunately, love at first sight does not happen in the marketing world as often as we would like it to. The Rule of Seven is an old marketing adage. It says that a prospect needs to see or hear your marketing message at least seven times before making a decision. Showing up consistently will help warm up your audience and build trust. Eventually they will look more into your profile.
You can use this engagement checklist to find out what steps you need to take when you’re wanting to engage with other social media accounts. All you need is 15-30 minutes a day to start with!
Simply concluding, a social media strategy needs an engagement strategy in order to increase engagement, increase website traffic and even customers-because you are targeting the right audience. Follow this foolproof guide to make a difference in your social media strategy!
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