Why Social Media Community Engagement is Powerful

The Social Media Industry is fast-moving, constantly shifting roles, and increasingly involving different Social Media managers to oversee the day-to-day execution and operations of a specific online, communications campaign.

Whether you’ve been placed in the commanding role as the content curator, chief social buzz-initiator, or blogger outreach first-responder; your specialized role is a key piece in the overall social strategy puzzle. Social Media strategists usually determine the best approach for developing a streamlined Social Media campaign that aligns seamlessly with other elements of a brand, or business’ marketing structure, and online presence.

One of the most important areas of a Social Media strategy should involve engagement with the brand or business’ community. If you’re creating new Social Media profiles for a new business, or if you’re taking over the role of managing existing Social Media profiles, the community is the most valuable commodity for the specific Social Media profiles to thrive.

Why Engage Proactively

There is reactive engagement and proactive engagement. Whether we’re referring to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or G+, proactive engagement is when you seek out content posted or published by a business, brand, blogger, or Social Media user, and create a sincere interaction based on the content you genuinely found interesting. Proactive engagement may also include reaching out to followers on Twitter, fans on Facebook, or any Social Media profile and strike up a conversation with that user based on either a common topic of interest, or simply, a friendly gesture or greeting to spark an interaction.

Social Media marketers use proactive engagement with bloggers and Social Media influencers often times to promote relevant media events, promotions, or exclusive offerings. Similar to any relationship, proactive engagement should come naturally, not forced, and not artificial.

Don’t Ignore the Reactive Engagement

When you’re managing Social Media platforms, do not ever ignore incoming direct messages from your community, retweets, mentions or comments. Think of every single mention as a phone call, or a greeting from a person you’ve ran into on the street. Every mention on Twitter and comment on Facebook is an interaction that somebody has made with the profile you are managing and now it’s your turn to find the best reply or response to that unique interaction. As a Social Media voice, you’re also in a customer support role and interactions left un-answered set a not-so-social tone.

Why is Engagement Powerful

We’re in the business of being social, creating content that resonates and presents a shareable piece of messaging that others are attracted to and want to learn more about. Engagement is all about connecting with others and building a strong community centered around the respective Social Media platform that you are building the focused community around.

Think of Engagement on Social Media platforms just as you would treat dating a new interest, or getting to know someone you want to get to know a bit better. When you get to know somebody off of Social Media, you take time to get to know what their interests are, what the person’s likes and dislikes are, and what really attracts their attention. Once you’ve built a sense of trust, each person involved in a newly developed relationship is excited to promote the other person and share that person with their friends. Social Media communities are built upon similar foundations and once a sense of reliability and trust is established, the relationship is validated.

The outcome of solid, organic and healthy engagement, results in maximized reach, reactive engagement, increase in shares, retweets and promotional support. For a business or brand building their presence across Social Media platforms, having a vested community support the key messaging that the brand or business published is the effect of successful and powerful Social Media engagement.