5 Online Engagement Strategies

An engaged online campaigns is a strategic business asset that enables business to inspire, motivate and mobilize its employees to achieve defined business goals. This is the idea I am going to discuss in this post, that how engaged employees can be motivated to succeed, take pride in their company and committed to the business’s success. My previous posts have also talked about this idea somehow. This is important, since businesses having engaged workforce reach their corporate objectives very fast, face lower customer attrition rates, experience higher stock prices and elevated performance to achieve higher productivity per employee. Since training and development is shifting to online modes like MOOCs, e-learning and webinars, you cannot engage learners the same way you used to do while training them in a traditional offline environment. This post has some connections with all these; however, I am talking here in context of online business campaigns, and online engagement strategies.  Obviously, the virtual networks have theirown pros and cons, which must be kept in mind while engaging your customers over such platform, in order to better engage them to achieve desired business outcomes. Let’s talk about the top 5 strategies for initiating and maintaining online engagement.

Behind building Communities are People, Not tools

I have observed quite a lot of time that online social engagement keeps to fall back on the tools a business adopts for sharing and spreading brand message. Those tools, however, don’t work themselves. It is the human capital i.e. people who organizes and executes the campaigns. Hence, people are the key to organization success and online engagement tools.

The community manager, the advocates and influencers would either make or break the success of business’s online initiatives. Can businesses determine those in their community that can be their advocates? Can they identify those in community that are influencers? Have businesses empowered their major internal workforce with the tools they need to develop and execute a successful and engaging online campaign? All this involves people, not tools.

Spread your message

Being a business manager for developing and executing your engaging online campaign, you need a plan. Just making a page on a social platform doesn’t come up with your fulfilled obligation. Social connections you make via your selected networks are not obligations; rather, these are huge opportunities to engage with your members, fans, clients and most importantly prospective customers.

As your business message spreads and you feel expansion in your community, the next question to consider is how would you fulfill the appetite for more?  Would you be loaded as a business to develop and spread your message? This immediate and direct connection needs a clear plan in terms of integration, infrastructure and most significantly, a set of policies and regulations for spreading your message. There is nothing more vital than a planned and collaborative process for responding promptly to requests, comments and inquires.

Find your advocates and fulfill their appetite

The basic feature for any community is the absolute engagement of its member. Earlier in your online campaign you would observe those advocates who can willingly spread your message and push it to their respective networks. With each Facebook post, blog, tweet your advocate waits to share what your campaign is giving. Availing the trust of your advocates and giving them a constant stream of sharable content just gives you ever growing reach, in terms of gaining more campaigns advocates from their own respective networks.  You must reward their efforts. Determine and recognize your advocates publically. Thank them frequently since they are the spine of your online campaign’s success.

Rules of Engaging online community

The rule has changed, putting the power of your message in the hands of visitor, consumer, or viewer. The aim of such rule and policy is not to control the posting and online engagement, rather it aims to provide a set of instructions for spreading content. Direct brand connection forms deep inherent value and keeps the advocates and visitors staying.

Engaging in social media needs a change in the way businesses view themselves and their connection with the public. The shift is seen on individual, cultural and organizational level. Prior to allocating resources to a social media campaigns, businesses must know how to reduce the risks while making rewards maximized. The very initial step is to develop a safe space for volunteers, employees and other stakeholders via effective and clear social media policies.

Develop Trust with Your Community

Smart observers of fruitful online campaigns know the issues in online communication. Well developed, effectively executed campaigns have reviewed the risks at hand and are aware of how to reduce them when needed. Just like your campaign is trusted and advocated by your community, you must also trust them in case of negative posts or comments.

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