Social Media Engagement: Open House or Soap Box

Social media has become one of the top priorities in the world of marketing as for many businesses it’s the key catalyst for brand growth. If done right, it’s domino-effect can create waves of positivity for many businesses to boost brand awareness and increase conversions to improve company profits. The domino-effect starts from creating engagement with users or consumers online. Many social media campaigns did not turn out well because they failed to engage with consumers.

So what is social media engagement?

Social media engagement is a very broad umbrella term that covers a lot of metrics. At its core, social media engagement is whenever someone interacts with your social media account.

It comes in the form of metrics such as:

• Likes
• Follows
• Shares
• Comments
• Retweets
• Click-throughs

In other word, social media engagement is every interaction people have with you on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. And these metrics are crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your social media campaign and accomplishing goals such as generating leads and sales.

Remember: Social media is meant to be social. I know. Obvious, right? But like I said, it’s amazing how many businesses get this wrong.

Think about it like soap box and open house. Soap boxes are accounts that make it all about themselves. They only talk about their products, business, etc. Businesses will get on top of it, grab their proverbial megaphone, and start shouting about their content until they finish and leave. Every once in a while, they’ll return and repeat the process.

Over time people will get annoyed by soap boxes and left at the end. Instead, they should be treating social media engagement like an open house—welcoming people in and get to know them. Make it two way. As a host, you should start the conversation and give the topic of discussion. If you’re running a restaurant, talk about food.

In conclusion, be an open house instead of soap box. A soap box is a one-way dialogue, with only outgoing messages being sent directly from your business’s account. While an open house is pure engagement. It’s one-on-one conversations that take place between your business and others.

Engagement is what will help you develop the most meaningful relationships on social with potential and current customers alike.