You already know that social media should be a big part of your overall marketing and branding strategy, but many businesses get confused when it comes to turning Las Vegas social media engagement into real-life, real-world engagement with customers. You might be posting regularly and incorporating social media into campaigns and promotions, but if you’re not creating real-life social engagement, you’re just clogging the internet with noise.
Social Media is Real-Life?
Here’s how you can turn social engagement into real-life interaction with customers.
Talk With Customers – Not At Them
Too many businesses these days use social media to talk AT their customers; you know how this goes; a business thinks they’re being super social by clogging their social feed with product commercials and promotions. But the key to encouraging real-life social interaction is to create a two-way dialogue online. When you create your messaging, your customer should be the focus. Talk with and about your customers – even sharing their own unique stories (and tying it in with your brand, if possible).
Get out of the Online Silo
It’s easy to separate online promotion from real-life interaction, especially if you’ve got different teams working on each. But your online branding shouldn’t be different than your real-world branding; in fact, the two should support and feed off each other. So if you’ve decided to create a social campaign, that’s great; just make sure you’re not being weirdly silent about it in your brick-and-mortar shop. For example, if you’re offering a discount for liking or posting on your Facebook page, be sure you’re letting people in your physical location know about it too. This way, you’re also aggregating more online followers.
Get in the Mindset
While you might think that engaging with customers online – and offline – is a tactic for marketing, it’s not. This customer engagement should more appropriately be labeled “marketing.” Sure, it’s a bit different than the way advertising has worked in the past, but as a culture, we’ve evolved – and marketing has to. One-dimensional marketing no longer works in our society, so don’t think of engagement as a tactic or ploy – think of it as exactly what it is: today’s marketing.