How companies can engage online followers and evaluate performance to build product awareness and a loyal following

In today’s uncertain economy, many companies are looking for lower cost ways to reach new customers. Many traditional advertising venues like TV, print and radio – known as ‘outbound marketing’ – not only carry a high cost, but simply don’t yield the benefits they once did.

In fact, HubSpot compared the average cost-per-lead for inbound vs. outbound marketing in a recently published e-book and found the average cost for inbound, or online channels, was 62% lower than traditional marketing channels.

If you’re reading this web marketing blog, you’re probably already aware of the vast potential the web offers entrepreneurs, small businesses and even large companies. You’ve certainly seen the cultural & technological shift toward smart phones and other devices that facilitate web-based commerce, information and relationships.

Understanding the myriad of options for harnessing these online channels is a big challenge for many, even professionals

In terms of your business, just how do you go about successfully using the web to drive leads, revenues and engagement?

Well that’s a pretty broad question that could take all day. But going a step further and as the title of this post says, how can you better engage online followers and turn them into ‘evangelists,’ which if pursued in a methodical way, can yield tremendous results.

Many large brands like Coca-Cola and M&Ms are able to do this on a large scale.

In fact any company, be it they’re a well known brand or a small enterprise, can capture much more traffic and engagement by doing a few simple things…data in fact shows companies who blog see 79% more Twitter followers.

Data also shows company’s who blog see, on average, 55% more website visitors.

What methods should I use to meet these kinds of goals?

The general consensus and methodology for accomplishing more web traffic, Twitter followers and general engagement online is to:

1.       Create outstanding content that’s timely and informative

2.       Optimize content for both search engines and people

3.       Promote this content strategically through various channels and analyze the results

Content itself can come in many forms – articles, e-books, blog posts, video, white papers, press releases, photos and so on. Content in fact can be re-packaged and distributed in other ways (i.e. take a series of blog posts and make a ‘podcast,’ which you can eventually turn into an e-book).

One important part of your content should be a blog. Blogging gives you the opportunity to talk about more appealing topics with your audience and make interesting correlations. Your blog is where you can target long-tail keywords, attract more inbound links and generate conversations in your comment section.

But to really drive conversions, you can’t just write something and throw it up there. While you will see increased traffic, conversions are what you really desire. To boost this number, you should also include what’s known as a ‘call-to-action’ at the end of each of your blog posts. As you will see at the end here shortly, we will include some instruction, suggestion or invitation on what you can do next.

Now that we’ve covered traffic and conversions, what about the free promotion part?

Here’s where it can get a little tricky but with persistence, many companies have seen tremendous benefit from actual social media engagement.

Before you do anything though, you need to listen to the groups of people talking about your industry…this ‘buzz’ is important to understanding where and how you can engage people online.

There are many tools available like Google Alerts, Twilert (Twitter), TweetDeck (Twitter) and others to help you do this.

Once you’ve evaluated where the ‘buzz’ in your industry, it’s time to go engage these prospective and current customers. For B2C companies, Twitter is a commonly used tool where companies can easily build a following. Sometimes, these followers post ‘thank you’ messages or other promotional type language talking about their experience.

But in order to make this happen effectively, you need to – be responsive, answer questions and respond to complaints in a timely and respectful matter

Being a good ambassador, sharing good content and carefully evaluating the ‘buzz’ on your company and industry will certainly yield a strong online following.  Some of these followers will in turn praise your products and services to their friends online.

As you can probably tell, this new type of ‘word-of-mouth’ advertising is quite powerful.

In the old days (…and even still today), many successful enterprises thrived on word-of-mouth advertising, which hardly costs anything except a good reputation and quality work.

Today, social media, blogs and discussion boards are changing the way people find information. Having your own ‘evangelists’ out there who share their good experiences will have big impacts on new customers seeing if what you offer suits their needs.

To learn more about these tactics for social media engagement, check back with us again or take a little while to review the e-book from HubSpot. And check out related posts below to see how this all ties together with other elements of marketing a business online.

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