What’s one lesser-known tip for getting people to engage with your brand more often?
These answers are provided by the Young Entrepreneur Council, an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year and have created tens of thousands of jobs. Learn more at yec.co.
1. Start Conversations
“If you want interaction, begin with a question. This is particularly true with social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others. Share the content that fits into your strategy, and then attempt to begin a conversation with a simple question. By doing so, you will be eliciting valuable feedback which will, in turn, boost engagement.”
Ryan Bradley, Koester & Bradley
2. Develop a Personality
‘People engage with brands that reflect their values, aspirations and needs. One of the best ways to build brand engagement is with a cross-channel content strategy that exhibits a personality that appeals to customers. Using a consistent and relatable voice across social media, blogs, podcasts, email, and advertising helps to establish a personality that customers recognize and respond to.’
Vik Patel, Future Hosting
3. Be a Better Listener
“It may not be lesser-known, but it certainly isn’t used a whole lot: Become a better listener. Forget stock responses or even those auto-generated messages. Give the customers who decide to engage with your thoughtful and meaningful responses, specifically based on their comments. People will notice this, and your brand will stand out.”
Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance
4. Ask for Feedback
“When it comes to getting people to engage with your brand more often, the trick is almost astonishingly simple: Just ask your audience! Send them surveys, ask for their feedback and use social media to your advantage, like through the question feature on Instagram. Stay receptive and stay attentive. Your audience knows what they want, and honing in on their wants is how you get them to engage.”
Veronica Romney, LoSoMo Inc.
5. Tell Your Story
“Most personal brands that are successful have mastered storytelling skills. Storytelling is such an underutilized skill that a lot of brands nowadays are missing. Documenting your entire life journey is where credibility, transparency and authenticity get built. Don’t just show your successes and accomplishments: Share your failures and mistakes to show that it is all part of a successful journey.”
Fritz Colcol, ABN Circle
6. Have a Strategy
“Content strategy is a must for any kind of engagement. You can write all the amazing e-books, blogs and white papers you want, but without a strategy behind them, you can only guess how effective they are. We approach every marketing campaign with strategy in mind and a goal to meet, and we flesh out our content from there. We have clear, actionable results and use content to back those goals up.”
Suneera Madhani, Fattmerchant
7. Use Humor
“Humor is a great way to get more people engaging with your brand. People love seeing funny videos, memes or other posts in their feeds, so you should use humor to get your business noticed. If something makes someone laugh, they’re more likely to like it, react to it and share it with their friends.”
John Turner, SeedProd LLC
8. Share User-Generated Content
“Sharing user-generated content is a great way to increase engagement. Ask your followers to send you photos of themselves using their product or share it on social media with a unique hashtag. You can then share their content on your profile. Users will love getting their photo featured on your profile and it will encourage others to share their own photos of your product or tweet at you more.”
Blair Williams, MemberPress
9. Seek Out Podcast Interview Opportunities
“Being interviewed on a podcast can bring your brand to thousands of people from all over the world. Understand your entrepreneurial story, build out a set of core content where you can add value to other entrepreneurs, and put yourself out there. Podcasts are always looking for interesting guests, and they’re always happy to promote your brand to their audience when you take it seriously.”
Connor Gillivan, FreeeUp
10. Answer People’s Questions
“Research your target market well and find out what questions they are asking online. Use sites like Quora, Reddit and Answer the Public to find out what they are searching. From there, create great content that answers their questions. Your target market will then find your post and start commenting. Don’t forget to reply to them in the comment section.”
11. Encourage Brand Ambassadorship
“A tip I always share with our 30-plus brand ambassadors is to educate the store’s staff. Through telling them about your product (and better yet, throwing them some free swag), you can get them to promote your brand over competitors when chatting with customers. By having more-or-less permanent brand ambassadors in the store, you can easily spread brand awareness and add to your customer base.”
12. Connect Your Content With Current Events
“Businesses that take part in conversations around news events or trends tap into an effective technique for increasing brand engagement. The holiday season is an obvious example, but there are other national days you can theme content around. Social media trends focused on fashion and entertainment news can also generate engagement. In short, make your business part of the conversation.”
Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.
13. Show Your Gratitude
“I like to hyper-personalize everything with my brand and tailor what I do to my audience. When I create content, I make sure I am tagging my fans and everything I do is about them. Even though the pictures have me in them, I am constantly acknowledging my fans and showing my gratitude for their participation. This makes them feel honored and participate more.”
Sweta Patel, Startup Growth Mode
14. Engage on Multiple Channels
“In 2019, you need to start thinking about diversifying your marketing strategy to personalize your content and engage users at multiple touch points. Connect all digital channels with remarketing campaigns and assessing which attribution channels led to the most sales. Finally, find ways to connect digitally with in-store connections by providing NAP info and in-store pickup options.”
Kristopher Brian Jones, LSEO.com
