Are You Engaging - Or Just Chattering?

Social media is a great business tool. It allows you to connect with your customers and clients in a very friendly, personal way, even if they are located thousands of miles away from you.

If you are using Facebook and Twitter and aren't seeing any results - either in the number of fans, followers,or sales, it's important to ask yourself "Are you engaging - or just chattering?"

How can you tell the difference? When you are engaging people, they are responding to you. They are commenting on your Facebook updates and links, they are replying to you, as well as retweeting on Twitter, and that leads them to visit your site more often and follow your blog more closely. 

You may notice an increase in the subscribers of your RSS feed and that people are leaving more blog comments. The number of your email newsletter subscribers should be increasing, too (assuming that your opt-in box is clearly displayed on your site or blog).

If these things aren't happening, take a look at the information you are posting on Facebook and Twitter. The information should be interesting to your target market, as well as something that relates to your site. Not everything you post has to be business-related, of course. You want to be personable and form relationships. But there is a fine line. You don't want to be so personable that you never mention your business!

If your Twitter feed is comprised of all ads, remember that no one wants to follow an ad feed! If it's full of tweets letting people know you ran out of dog food or that you're glad it's sunny outside, some people may get a little bored of that and un-follow you. It's time to tweet about relevant information.

The next time you log into Twitter, take a look at your profile and read through your latest tweets. Be objective! Would you want to follow yourself?

Comments

[brenbe]

Great points! The person in my social media circle who was most active, and earliest active with social media, I have since unfollowed because of the high percentage of inanity with regular rather offensive comments, outweighed the legitimate good content that was there too. And he was someone I originally really admired for the idea of using social media so thoroughly. I feel like if using it for business reasons the majority of comments should have useful content. But, the 'fun' stuff often has the most engagement! It's tough to balance.

[Diane Danielson/CEO, Downtown Women's Club]

I did an informal study a few months ago and had to laugh that my most "clicked on" links or RT'd status updates had to do with "Legos" and "Eggo's" (not business). So very Dr. Suess! Huh?

[brenda be]

Do you think that people are perhaps interested in and follow one largely because of quality content, but they feel more comfortable engaging with you around more social issues? Perhaps they are too intimidated much of the time to engage with the more intellectual stuff, but, perhaps it keeps them interested. I am interested in this not only for business but just as a study in human psychology!