Are You using Social Media to Engage with your Target Market?

The toy store at the mall in my childhood home town was brilliant.  They had a big display of popular toys right out front where every kid could come by and play with them.

A child who sees his favorite toy on the shelf gets excited, but a child who has that toy in his hands can be downright persuasive!  That toy store increased sales by encouraging interaction.

You can do the same thing for your online store. You can increase visitor engagement with social media.Your goal is to make your site as interesting as possible to your visitors, especially through social media.  Most people can’t go a day without checking Facebook.  How can you make your site interesting to them?

Here are some helpful suggestions for increasing your visitor engagement with social media.

Add Social Media Links and Widgets

Put links on your site so that visitors can instantly share, like, tag, subscribe, or tweet the page they’re viewing.  Sure, some people know how to use their own programs or copy and paste links by hand, but you’re not interested in making things difficult, are you?

By putting the icons and links on each page, you make it easy for even novice social media users to be engaged with your site.

Blog as Frequently as Possible

Don’t write blog posts that overtly advertise your products, just blog. Why give people some free bit of information related to your sales niche without forcing a “buy stuff” link into every article?

Because, people will come back for free information.

They’ll share links to good blog articles and send their friends to your site.  That’s the whole point of visitor engagement with social media: your visitors voluntarily sending people to your site.

Give to Get

Devote time to interaction with your visitors, followers, friends, and subscribers.  Are people commenting on a Facebook post about your product?  Make a useful comment of your own.

People will often ask questions in their comments; you should be there with helpful answers.  Think of interactive questions and post them to your followers.  Initiate and contribute to discussion.

It’s your job to give your visitors opportunities to interact with you.  If you can maximize visitor engagement with social media, you can build a network of people who enjoy interacting with you and your site.

That’s advertising that will grow on its own for free.

Additional Resources:

Is Your Social Media Program Delivering the Goods?

Using Social Media: Integrating Videos into your Website