A successful customer engagement strategy also includes creating a customer experience to integrate across all social platforms and leverage social media engagement to reach new customers.  

People spend hours every day on their phones and social media, and if you’re not capturing at least some of their attention, that means that they’re engaging with someone else’s brand or business instead of yours.

In the past, businesses communicate with their customers through television, radio, or print advertising, and many still do, but these mediums facilitate a one-way only conversation.  

A conversation can be cold since it’s only from the company, but if the same message comes from a friend or family member, it will be perceived as a good thing.  

Social media has fundamentally changed how communication works between businesses and their customers. Essentially, creating a public forum for communication, it’s a two-way street where customers engage and promote their favorite brands.    

There are three aspects to making your customer engagement program inherently social. 

1. Social Recognition through customer rewards system and badges notifications, which use open graph APIs, post to social media is a great way to offer special discounts to friends and family.  

You can also use social media recognition to drive “race to the top” contests that quickly engage users’ spheres through social sharing. 

2. Social Sharing is one of the best social referral solutions and can be driven by importing contacts from emails and providing designed messages that are easily shared. 

These messages can then be shared through top social sites, e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. You can also integrate on-site and purchase activities giving more opportunities and subjects to share with the various social spheres.   

3. Focusing on Active Influencers is the final aspect of a successful social campaign. Reward them for successful referral sign-ups and provide incentives for agents, partners, and publishers based on their success metrics and their affiliated members. 

Another tactic that works well is providing bonus rewards (VIP Perks) widgets for customers who are referred by bloggers or membership organizations. 

Once you have a core set of incentives chosen, you want to structure them in ways that also build excitement.

Here’s what are some of the best customer engagement solutions for social media:

1. Tiered Rewards

When it comes to Gamification, we’ve found that people love striving for the next level. A tiered customer rewards program keep them engaged and pushing to reach the next summit.  

You can structure tiers in many ways. Leveling up for increased discounts when you reach a points milestone. Else, having a tier where points are worth and you get a bigger prize per point. 

Brands can easily create tiered rewards with NextBee’s automated customer engagement platform which is unique for its:

• Rich-featured admin panel where brands can create rewards according to the user’s preferences keeping in mind their buyer persona
• Social customer engagement within a few clicks and set timely milestones to grab a new lead
• Boosts user participation to take part actively in leaderboards, gamification elements so that customers feel encouragement

2. Segmentation

Having the ability to segment is a fantastic way to engage people in different demographics/scenarios. 

For example, you can separate corporate rewards from personal rewards which will help your customers meet different tier and discounts, allowing them to be upsold at other times. 

3. Options

Indeed, “Variety is the spice of life!” And, while we recommend starting with little rewards vs. “everything,” it is good to have options. 

For example, in our NextBee Customer Engagement System, we can set up and offer infinite reward options. Everything from in-store/service credits to coupons to cash to donations and gift cards. 

There are zero markups on any rewards and we only make suggestions based on data that will help brands to succeed. 

Now that you’ve chosen the rewards that excite and create engaging activities. For segmenting, the best engagement is tracking progress and get socially active in your users’ social spheres.

Conclusion

A proficient and structured engagement platform can and will spark users to generate content. And different information you need to take that user-generated content to power your marketing strategies. 

With best practices, brands can incorporate for greater engagement and garner more substantial and more good user-generated content. 

For more information, feel free to contact NextBee.