Every business wants to find the sweet spot between new and returning customers. Understanding brand engagement and audience participation is critical to making this happen.

Your brand is more than your company name and the products or services it offers. Your brand also includes the particular marketing approach and communication methods that set you apart from your competitors. When done well, your brand has an enduring impact on the minds of your customers.

This means that your brand must engage audiences in a tangible way. Brand engagement is successful when a person forms an emotional attachment to a brand. One key to building brand engagement is audience participation.

Whether your business is repairing cars or providing insurance, the more your audience plugs into your brand the more likely they are to come back to you when the need arises. When customers are connected to your brand, they are also more likely to refer their friends and family to your business.

The marketing space where brand engagement and audience participation is changing the fortunes of companies, big and small, is your social media strategy.

Social Media Interaction Increases Connection with Your Brand

A recently published study affirmed that engagement with a brand increased exponentially if key audiences were active on social media.  The study indicated that for the average customer, median age of 20.6, their personal identification and enjoyment with a brand grew the more they interacted with others and the business itself on social media (specifically Facebook). The increase in self-identification and involvement was due solely to social media.

This data tells us that the first step that businesses must take to increase audience involvement is to leverage their social media profiles.

When doing so, brands must direct their social media marketing to where their target audiences are already gathered. If they spend most of their time socializing with friends on Facebook, that’s where your brand should be visible. If the target audience for your products or services is more corporate, then your engagement efforts should be focused on LinkedIn.

Putting your efforts into the right social media space makes it easier for current and potential customers to associate themselves with your brand.

What are the Best Ways for Business to Use Social Media?

Social media’s reach is undeniable.  The opportunity presented to businesses to increase audience interaction is limitless.

But, with every opportunity there are challenges.

These challenges include finding out what motivates people, what’s the best method to communicate with your audience and what messages resonate with consumers.  Gaining insight into the best ways to address these challenges will increase your chances of producing tangible results for your business through social media.

Many companies try to answer these questions on their own using in-house talent in marketing, advertising or public relations, and this works well for many companies.

However, the strategies and tools used to increase engagement through social media have evolved beyond Facebook likes, Google +1s and tweets on Twitter. Social media marketing has become a specialized discipline that includes ad platforms, community management and data analysis.

To find out the right strategy and tactics that will increase audience involvement with your business, you need to the right social media marketing partner.

Blueprint specializes in identifying the best ways to reach key audiences and speak their language in the social media space. Give us a call at 770-817-9560 and let’s talk about how we can work together to engage your current and potential customers with influential social media campaigns.

By: Rashida Wilson