You have only 15 seconds to confirm the engagement of a user.
So how is it that you keep your viewers hooked to your content? How do you ensure that your visitors won’t leave and never look back at your page?
Well, I’ll tell you how.
Broadly speaking, there are two places your visitors could find you:
- On your website
- On a social media site
While you have to be prepared to be able to capture visitors at both ends, today I’ll specifically be guiding you through the fruitful path of the social media.
The social media is an ever-expanding platform for marketers like yourself as a large number of people spend an even larger amount of time on social networking sites.
Source: Go Gulf
Apparently there are two types of people on these social networking sites: creators and curators.
Creators are those who generate original content such as images and videos and post it. Curators, on the other hand, are those who re-post or share content available on the internet.
It is this group of people, consisting of 41% of total internet users that you ought to be targeting.
The curators may not be able to make content themselves, but they can be absolutely terrifying judges when it comes to sharing and reposting things.
These people are not easily impressed and you have to give everything you have.
This is where I begin to show you how to absolutely impress them with your content so embrace yourself and read on.
The first thing that you must keep in mind when planning to broadcast yourself on the social media is that data worth millions of bytes is churned out every minute.
What you have to do is create material that will not only help you stay abreast of the information tidal wave but, more importantly, get noticed and loved by the people.
1One of the best ways of doing so is by generating something that is new, or unique. This trick can offer you the biggest edge over your competitor and help you register in the minds of people.
Mabel’s Labels is one such business that is completely unique providing it’s users with custom made labels with a name and logo of one’s choice. This is unique because these stickers they make are for kids to put on their belonginigs to help with identification or prevent loss. They even make tags for kids’ clothings! Cute right?
Mabel’s Labels is very active on both Facebook and Twitter with regular posts and videos that’ll have their visitors entertained even if they have no new offer.
If users trigger a search with the keywords ‘baby goods/kids goods’ this page will be generated in the search result as well.
Having been found once, look at the many ways in which this Facebook page can lead the visitors onto the next step with their CTA or Call-To-Action buttons.
- Shop Now: this buttons gets down directly to business as it calls its visitors to do the one thing they desperately want: make a purchase!
- Invite friends to like the Page: while this still does not take visitors to your main website, it will do the work of publicity if the customers or simply people who were impressed by the idea or concept will share the page.
- Link: finally there’s the link to the main website that will surely bring about greater views. Although this does not seem too important because this page already has a Shop Now
You shouldn’t be surprised to know that their Facebook page alone generates 11% of the site’s total traffic.
The Twitter page for Mabel’s Label is also up and running.
It is not as if the product is absolutely new, because this has been on the market for the last twelve years, but the fact that they use humour is simply awesome.
Here again you can see on the left side of the page, they have the link to their webpage so this will also lead visitors onto their website, which will eventually turn into converts.
Besides being new and unique, you could also have a story to say.
Have you seen the Humans of New York page on Facebook?
It features different people, real people and their stories. They are not great stories, but they are true stories and the sheer number of likes and shares each of these pictures get is amazing.
The story-telling equivalent of the internet in real life would be CocaCola who always have heart-touching stories to tell in their commercials.
So while you are at it, you might want to be honest and tell your audience what motivated you to initiate your business and how you want to really deliver.
This is a great move for several reasons. A story not only puts you in context, but also allows people to connect with you. You and your business are not then viewed as just that, a business. It helps build depth and thereby trust in your services.
Another thing you have to do on your social networking sites is basically telling people why they should opt for your product or service.
It’s quite simple. Just tell them why they should spend their time and energy on something.
Visitors are bound to go land at their website at a point given the amount of time they spend simply sifting through things.
You could also tell your visitors precisely why they should choose your service. You have to make them feel like they are missing out on something absolutely amazing if they are not using what you have to offer to them.
4. Instead of indirectly calling them to action, go do it directly.
Don’t get it?
Use action words such as ‘Discover. Explore. Share. Join. Find’ in order to prompt your visitors to start with your services today.
These power words often motivate people to something they might otherwise have not opted for.
Finally, but most importantly engage your visitors in such a way that they keep coming back for more and the best way to do that is through gamification.
Gamification is the technique in which game-like features [such as rewards, loss aversion and competition] are harbored for non-game like matters just to drive the behavior of users.
Remember how I was saying at the beginning of this blog how you have to get the attention of social media users amidst all the noise of the internet?
Well, this is one way of doing it.
When thrown a challenge people tend to get all ready for action. This is because the competitive natures of the person kicks in making them want to win or earn a reputation or a status.
For instance, the Facebook page of Step 2 hosts a competition every Friday and showers it’s visitors with impressive gifts.
Not only that, but if you head over to the main website of Step 2 you’ll find a leader board that shows how the parents shopping goodies for their children rank. That way buyers are motivated to buy more and retain their position.
It’s always the incentives that people are looking for. While you can always tell a person why they need something, you cannot make them share that information. But people will voluntarily share any new bonuses or badges they may get from a competition, just like people playing Candy Crush share their score every time they achieve a new level or they’ve beat an old friend’s score.The best part about these weekly or monthly competitions is that since they are hosted on the social networking sites, people will share their accomplishments [the prize they’ve won, the badges they’ve earned] and this will give you the exposure that you were looking for.
Conclusion
Your presence on the social media is essential because the social media today tends to be the hub of a majority of internet users. You need to absolutely wow these people and attract them to your service and product and convert.
You may have an amazing website and the best deals in town, but without the accessibility and exposure that the social media offers your efforts can be futile.
So go out there and generate the much-deserved traffic.
Do leave a comment below to tell me how things are working out.
Related articles: social media engagement, social media automation tools, facebook marketing strategies, social media marketing strategies
