How often have you ‘liked’ a brand or product on Facebook never to visit the page or hear from the brand again? Getting a company account set up on Facebook and has become the standard first step in a brand’s social media outreach. However, there are still an awful lot of businesses who haven’t taken a step back and looked at the bigger picture, set objectives for this activity, or dovetailed their social media plan into the wider marketing strategy. They often haven’t thought through their content strategy (if they even have one!) or learnt how to engage with their target audience through these mediums.

Too often companies dive straight in, relying on random status updates as their social media strategy. Getting thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook is only half the battle – creating an engaging and compelling space for those who like what your brand is doing and how you are building a relationship with them, is actually a much better measure of successful social media outreach.

Essentially, poor engagement and irrelevant content will put people off your brand. Too much (and too little!) communication and overtly ‘sales-y’ content will alienate your fans. Here are a few tips on how to successfully engage with your audience:

• Encourage your customers to share their experiences – ensure you have this capability on any great deal pages

• Provide interesting and useful content worth reading! This will encourage your fans to respond to you and share the content with their friends

• Be engaging and helpful with your fans – always respond through the medium they contacted you on

• Avoid too much direct marketing in your content as this will put people off

• Ensure you always enable the click through from a specific deal to the correct page on your site

• Make your profile unique- it goes without saying that standing out will make you memorable! Try apps and competitions to engage your fans

• Most importantly, don’t make social media a silo strategy for your company. Use it to compliment your wider strategic outreach and content plans

In regards to the general consumer, they often don’t care a great deal about the actual brand; they care about the product or service you offer and their relationship with you. They will often ‘like’ their favourite brands on Facebook or follow them on Twitter to receive discounts, deals and offers.

However, Social Media Today reported that according to a recent survey, the reason a luxury consumer engages with his or her favourite brand via social media is vastly different than those of the general population.  Consumers in the US earning at least $200,000 a year, don’t care so much about discounts and deals, they follow their favourite brands for the simple reason they love the brand or have an affinity for it.

Regardless of the market, content should still be at the heart of all activity!