If you have been around the web long enough there probably isn’t much you haven’t seen.
The good news is that observation serves as a great way to learn. That is why our doctors, teachers and other highly skilled professionals spend time observing more experienced pros doing their work prior to them taking the work on themselves.
When it comes to digital marketing though, it is a bit of the Wild Wild West.
The learning programs and curriculums are just taking shape and for the most part there is no barrier of entry for people who want to get into the business.
This leads to a lot of so called experts telling brands and businesses how they should build their digital presence, however there is little to say the information they are getting is correct.
While the entirety of this topic is a discussion for another day, there is a moral here that I want all businesses to consider.
If you are being told that a strategy is to just create content and put it on your owned properties and promote it via your social feeds, then you are missing out on a major part of a successful content strategy which by the way may be one of your biggest opportunities.
Promotion and Engagement Are Not the Same?
I want every business leader, owner and marketing leader to ask themselves this question.
How does our audience connect with us?
And I don’t mean following, liking and retweeting. Those are all passive engagements and while they are important, it is the active engagement that yields the greatest probability of conversion.
The other day I read an interesting piece from a B2B via Facebook where I found myself interested in learning more about their offering.
It was a sponsored post, which I rarely read, but this post caught my attention so I dove in.
After reading I left a comment on the post complimenting them on the article and letting them know I’d be interested in learning more.
One week later and not a word. Not a response to my Facebook comment and not a response via any other channel. Trust me when I say I am not a hard person to find.
While I realize I could pick up the phone and reach out, I felt that I had already done so. Given the company was spending money to promote their content and I had taken the time to respond I felt it was their turn to engage with me. Leading me to the main point of this article.
How Can Readers Actively Engage With You, Your Brand and Your Content?
The efforts we make in digital marketing and content marketing are important to our businesses. That is why we are driving our story to our blogs and social sites.
We believe we have a compelling story to tell.
With every company having slightly different goals for their digital efforts, the desire to engage your audience should be on every brands list.
When you have a chance to connect, converse and listen to your audience you are moving rapidly toward a conversion opportunity.
This is why brands must listen to their audience, respond and react to those who share their content and be especially proactive in engaging those who take the time to reach out.
Whether that outreach came from a blog comment, a response on social media or an inbound form on your website, don’t miss the opportunity to convert the opportunities right in front of you.
For businesses looking to improve their conversions, it is time to move beyond promotion and start engaging.
How does your business use engagement to increase brand loyalty and drive conversions?
Daniel Newman is the co-founder of V3*Broadsuite and is an experienced C-level executive, serving as a strategy consultant for small and mid-sized businesses. He’s also an insight/analyst partner to four Fortune 50 enterprises and previously served as the co-founder and CEO of EC3, a hosted IT and communications services provider. Prior to that, he served as the CEO of United Visual, Inc. in Chicago Illinois.
He is a widely published writer who contributes weekly to Forbes, Entrepreneur, Huffington Post and industry publications such as Commercial Integrator, Sound & Communication and Corporate Tech Decisions. He’s also author of three best-selling business books including The New Rules of Customer Engagement, The Millennial CEO, and just recently Evolve: Marketing (^as we know it) is Doomed.
Daniel has established a reputation as a leading thinker in topics such as Social, Big Data, Cloud and Mobile. He has been named to many top influencer lists in all of these areas, including recognition by the Huffington Post as one of the 100 business and leadership accounts to follow on Twitter. He is also an adjunct professor of management at North Central College.