Relationship building, as you try to stay on top of your client’s mind and as you nurture them to become customers, can be hard. You’ve been engaging your audience for your ecommerce store on social sites, but have not generated the desired results.
You have been wondering how to increase engagement with your target audience, get them to trust your brand, and nurture them to be customers.
Target audience engagement is changing each day. Research by Statista shows
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This article will help you by sharing 10 ways you can use to drive better engagement on social media for your ecommerce store.
Share more of the user-generated content
Customers trust other customers who have used a brand’s products and gotten great results. They will more likely engage with content created by satisfied customers on social media.
You can encourage your customers to create different content types like videos, texts, images, testimonials, or tweets showing the value they’ve gotten from their purchased products. Once your customers post their content, you can repost it on your feed and tag the individual customers who posted it to even drive more engagement and boost e-commerce conversions. When target customers see other people enjoying your products, it creates social proof that your business can deliver value, and engage more with your ecommerce brand on social media.
Run influencer marketing campaigns
People engage more with content posted by influencers they trust in their industry. As an ecommerce brand, partnering with these influencers and giving them ideas for the content you want them to create, and mentioning your brand can drive more engagement to your content and store. It’s important to learn how to leverage AI for influencer marketing to scale your marketing campaigns effectively.
When target customers see their trusted influencer advocating for a particular ecommerce brand’s products, they will want to know more about the brand. They will engage with it and see if it can help solve their problems. You can target more micro influencers compared to mega influencers, as they have an active audience and are more niche-focused audiences.
Be consistent in posting high-engaging and visual content
Share different types of content that interest your audience. For example, you can share behind-the-scenes content to show your audience how your brand works. This helps build trust and engages them more.
You can also share video content showing how your products work and how they solve pain points. Again, it’s important to post content when your target audience is active on social media so more of them can see and engage with it. Use social media scheduling tools to make it easy to plan and automate the posting of your content on different social media sites. Ensure your content is authentic, useful, and speaks to your target audience’s interests, showing how to solve their pains.
Here’s what Brian, digital manager at INTO THE AM, says
Short-form video content creation is yet another essential component of our digital marketing strategy for our e-commerce stores. By curating behind-the-scenes footage, curated styling advice, and festival-oriented ensembles, and posting them as TikTok or Instagram reels, we not only get to showcase our products in action but also spark inspiration and ongoing conversation about our brand within our target demographic.
Run polls and surveys on your customers
To help you understand your target audience better and create valuable content they enjoy and engage with, you can run surveys or polls to collect information from your customers on what they love most.. Here is what Oleh Yemelianov, CMO at Cognition Escapes, says
‘’We have noticed that interactive formats have the greatest effect. For example, in stories, we often use polls, quizzes, or simple questions for the audience. This creates a dialogue, not a monologue. When people feel that their opinion is important, they are more active in commenting, sharing, and returning to the page.
Personalization is also a step towards success. For example, we segment the audience and create content specifically for different groups – from new subscribers to regular customers. This allows each person to see relevant content that is interesting to them, which automatically stimulates more reactions and comments.’’
The surveys will help you understand more about your customer content consumption and engagement, so you can create more content that they will consume. The information can also help you know when your target audience is most active, so you can post and engage them more at those times.
Showcase customer reviews and testimonials
Customers love stories, and sharing amazing stories with great social media storytelling techniques on how an ecommerce brand changed the lives of their customers can drive more engagement to your content.
To boost these stories and provide proof, share customer testimonials and reviews of your product. Instead of writing text-based testimonials, you can request customers to share video testimonials. The followers can see the person behind the testimony, even know their website and their social accounts. For example, here is a testimonial from one of Bulk.ly clients about the social media automation tool the brand offers.
Focus more on sites where your audience is more engaged
Customer engagements differ from one social site to another. Research and know the social media platform where most of your customers engage, and create high-quality, attractive content to engage them. Post content that performs better on that site.
For example, if it’s on Instagram, post more pictures and screenshots of your products. On LinkedIn, you can post more video content alongside text-based content.
Even for the other less-engaged sites, create content to attract potential leads and engage them. Also, share stories behind the scenes of your business operations to build trust and transparency with target customers.
Partner brands that offer complementary products
You can partner with brands that offer complementary products to yours. With your combined marketing effort, create and engage the target audience on different social media sites. Let the audience see the value your products will bring to them in solving their pains.
They will likely engage and try to use your products to solve their problems. And since the need and demand for one product opens the door for their complementary products, you increase the chance of customers buying your product.
For example, if you’re selling printers and you partner with a brand that sells ink, it will be easy to sell those products together as they complement each other. To make this work out well, use the product research tool to find the best complementary products that your consumers use alongside yours, then partner with those brands.
Know and plan your goals
Social media engagement needs a strategy to work effectively. Ensure you have a working social media workflow. The first strategy is to have a plan and a goal for your engagement. Have clear and well-articulated goals for your engagement.
What do I want to achieve from my engagement? Do you want more leads, more social followers? Etc. Those are the questions to ask. For example, this can increase LinkedIn engagement by 10% in the next three months by posting great, awesome content twice per month, engaging and replying to all comments.
Give customers great customer service
Many target customers now engage brands on social media when they’ve challenges. Having a great customer service experience on social media can drive great engagement from potential leads and past customers.
Awesome customer service built trust and loyalty, and many customers will refer others to your brand to get the services. When satisfied customers start advocating for your brand because of your great services, you attract more engagement from other leads who end up becoming your customers. Here is what Kevin, CEO of The Ad Firm
Engaging people means you have to stop acting like a broadcaster and start being a true community partner. I tell my clients to view every comment and direct message as a guest walking into their store. You wouldn’t ignore someone who says hello. You need to acknowledge them, thank them for a kind word, and help them with a problem. This simple act of responding personally and promptly changes everything. It transforms a faceless brand into a group of people someone wants to talk to. We train our teams to answer with the brand’s unique voice, maybe with a little humor or a follow-up question, to keep that dialogue going strong. That direct interaction builds a level of trust you simply cannot buy with ads.
Strategically use hashtags in your content
Some followers use hashtags in searching for content to engage with. Optimize your content by posting content with hashtags that prospects use mostly on social media.
It will make your content visible to many followers on your channels and help drive more engagement with your content. When prospective customers see your content through hashtag search and find it useful, they can share it with their friends to even drive more engagement.
FAQ on Social Media Engagement
- Can you drive more engagement from paid promotions?
Yes, with paid promotions, you can put your content in front of a large audience that can engage with the content, know more about your brand and what it offers, and even convert into customers.
- What best drives more engagement on social media for your store?
Consistency. If you don’t give the audience valuable content on social media consistently, you lose the chance to drive more engagement to your brand. Show authenticity, establish your brand’s voice, and convey value to drive more engagement and build trust with your target audience on social media.
- Why is engagement more important than follower count?
It’s more important to have a small audience that highly engages with your brand and content. With high engagement, your audience will gain a deeper understanding of your brand and its offerings, easily building trust and driving more conversions. A large follower count that isn’t even interested in what you do will not drive results for your business.
Final Thoughts on How to Increase Social Media Engagement
Social media is more than a place to generate leads for your ecommerce store. customers. It’s a place to build deep relationships, for a community of like-minded people. Keep improving the content you share based on engagement metrics like shares, comments, and likes.
Target customers want to see the humanity of a brand behind the products it offers. Executing the above strategies across different social media channels will help you do that. You make your customers feel they’re part of the brand and get them to buy and even advocate for your brand to their friends.
