Social Media Tactics: 5 Engagement Strategies – RSVP for 10/19

Please join us at GovDelivery’s event on Wednesday, October 19^th, Social Media’s Role In Cost Effective Solutions.

The theme for this week is ways to engage your key stakeholders. Much of this is remembering your customer service skills. One strategy is to think carefully about the way you interact with your community offline, and try to replicate online. Here are 5 quick tips:

1. Set Clear Guidelines and Post Social Media Policy

Many agencies have posted guides and policies to their websites. This is a great idea, and one every social media manager should consider. It is important that the guides are easily available for your community to see. If someone posts inappropriate content that you need to delete, this will serve as a way to notify that person why his or her comment was deleted.

2. Have a Conversation

People want more from an agency than just simply pushing out content and information. Make sure that you are actually engaging and have a conversation with your stakeholders. If someone sends you an @ message or a DM on Twitter, make sure you respond and do your best to answer their question, or acknowledge the message. When you are building your community, it is important to be very active and engaged. If people see that you are responding and engaging, your followers will go up and you will have a more engaged community.

3. Follow Up

Let’s say one of your followers or fans gives you a great idea on how to improve a service or your product, be sure to follow up and say what the next step is. If someone has complained, be sure to follow up and make sure his or her complaint has properly been addressed. Put your customer service skills to work.

4. Don’t Avoid the Negative, Be Human & Admit Mistakes

Much of social media management entails good customer service skills; don’t forget them as you manage your social media initiatives. If someone sends you an angry message, as much as your would like to ignore them and write them off – simply acknowledging the complaint can go a long way.

People make mistakes. If you happen to accidently post or tweet something, make no attempt to cover it up. People will respect you more for just admitting your mistake and moving forward.

5. Think Strategically About Content

Look at your web analytics and traffic and see if you can spot any trends of themes. Is there some kind of content that causes your traffic to spike or increase followers/fans? Pay attention, if you see content that is working, try to develop similar content. If you see people want to read more about human interest or feel good stories, consider setting up a weekly blog series dedicated to that kind of content.

If you are interested in learning more about social media and bringing some great lessons back to your agency, please join us at GovDelivery’s event on Wednesday, October 19^th, Social Media’s Role In Cost Effective Solutions. You will be able to connect with others who are working on social media strategies and learn a lot of great lessons to bring back to your agency. You also won’t want to miss the opportunity to hear David Kirkpatrick speak, author of The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World.