X (formerly Twitter) is a social platform, and this is something to keep in mind when taking into account your engagement statistics and visibility. This is one of the cornerstones of B2C – business to customer – marketing, and strategy in the digital age. Social media allows for businesses and consumers to have a direct line to one another..
Your job as the manager of a business leveraging X is to find ways to help foster and build these relationships. The best ways to do this include using analytics to understand your follower and audience base, as well as planning perfectly-crafted messages and engaging content to publish.
A pratfall many X users fall victim to is focusing only on how many followers they can acquire, but the truth is that followers can come and go. It’s not a bad idea to focus on your follower count, but a more important is to foster relationships on X with followers you believe will commit to you.
1. First, focus on your brand voice
Advertisement has been about grabbing attention since the dawn of marketing, and social media marketing doesn’t lose sight of this idea. Social media is a very personal tool, but businesses using it don’t have to be void of personality, even if they’re an entity instead of a single user.
Brands on X use humor, viral content, and a unique voice to boost engagement every day. This authentic, personable persona is how consumers identify with these brands and the human edge helps them to build a connection.
2. Stick to the voice you choose for yourself
Once you establish a brand voice, it’s imperative that you stick with it. It’s common that brand managers become more cautious with their posting when their X followers grow in number. More visibility means more chance for criticism, so brands with more playful, comical tones have a greater liability attached. However, understand that this is inevitable – fostering relationships means sticking to who your brand is and being there for older followers who you’ve already got on the hook.
3. Always engage
It’s imperative that when using social media you always think about the end result of your strategy. This further suggests that you need to commit to fostering relationships instead of focusing on how many followers you can amass in a set amount of time.
One way to make sure followers that do flock to you stick is to engage with them. When they mention you, respond. Consider running a DM campaign that introduces your brand to new followers.
4. Start public conversations
One of the best ways to create engagement with both followers and potential followers is to start up an AMA – otherwise known as an “Ask Me Anything.” This format of engagement includes followers asking questions about you, the business and brand or any other related topic, and the X manager answers however many questions they possibly can.
5. Know and mention your followers
First, understand who your followers are and what they are uniquely interested in. Fedica offers you tools that will illuminate both of these things, so we have you covered on that end.
Next, utilize this information to start conversations with followers. You don’t have to wait for them to engage – start conversations using this information to build valuable X relationships.
6. Repost content from others
Your X timeline should have a variety of content showcased for multiple reasons. One reason is that utilizing reposted content can help foster X relationships. Say a follower posts a blog post about a subject relevant to your business. Quote their post and give them a shout out. “Great work!” or “Look at this blog post @follower posted. Really interesting insight!” This builds your relationship and also varies the content you post to your account.
X is a platform that heavily utilizes social interaction – it is social media, after all. Using social platforms to help business relationships grow is how you start to accumulate followers that in turn become loyal customers.