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Interacting with your followers and having meaningful engagements and conversations are key to social media and content success.

What keeps surprising me is that this is where a lot of companies and personal brands are really missing the mark.

You will be surprised how many social media folks just don’t engage back at all, and the ones that do, usually simple “like” the other persons comment or maybe sometimes say a simple ‘thank you’.

It seems like most people only look at questions and answers as a form of meaningful engagement. But they are missing out.

The good news, is that just by showing up, you’ ll be better than 90% of the players in the market.

But just showing up is a technique that is easy to copy and not necessarily good enough for you to make real impact on your followers.

In the past few months, I became obsessed with speaking to my followers (Snapchat is a step toward that direction), so I’ve been experimenting a lot. The results I’ve been getting are amazing.

From simply having better quality interactions, to scoring 3 podcast appearances and two interviews.

I want to share with you the 3 techniques that I’ve been using so you can leverage them as well.

3 tricks for better interactions

Personalize your message

You already know (at least I hope so) that you have to make an effort and answer anyone who engages with your on social media. But when you get tens or hundreds on interactions every day, it becomes hard to think of anything but a simple ‘thank you’.

The problem with that simple short and boring ‘thank you’ is that it feels like you don’t really mean it. Specially when you write “thank you” or “thank you for sharing” 10 time in a row.

The reason it’s important to thank your followers and engagers is to improve your brand and relationships. But you’re probably not getting any feedback on your ‘thank you’s’. Why? Because it sounds like you’re just being polite and doing the minimum possible to thank them.

So how do you keep it fresh? One of the tactic you can find here in the next headline, but for other tactics the key is not in being original, but in being diverse.

Instead of saying ‘thank you’ spice it up with your own tone of voice. From “thanks Roy, you rock for sharing” to “Awesome for sharing, love your profile pic” and so on.

How can you come with hundreds of those to answer all your mentions and shared content? You don’t need to. Just come up with 5-7 and mix them up as you go. Make them original, personalised and fun.

User their personal name

This is so simple that I can’t believe I haven’t been doing this from day one. Next time you engage with someone on social – write whatever you would normally write, but use their first name.

Change your “Thanks for sharing” to “Hi John, thanks for sharing”

Change your “My tip is …” to “Hi Clare, my best tip will be..”

Well, you get it.

The second you mentioned someone’s name the conversation is already much more emotional and personal.

I’ve been testing it out for the last two weeks on my Twitter account and my engagements have become much more meaningful and lasting.

Try it now.

Appreciate them

People are busy. They are suffering from information overload and decision fatigue all day, every day. Yet, they find the time to follow your story, read and share your content. Pay any attention to what you do. You shouldn’t take it for granted. And you should let them know you’re not taking it for granted.

Every once in a while just tell your followers how much you appreciate them spending time reading your and sharing your content. How important they are to you.

It is simple, yet powerful.

Now to you

These tricks are so easy to implement that there is no excuse not to.

Take the next two weeks and test these tricks, see if your engagement improves.

Then, come back and tell me in the comments – did the quality of conversation with your followers improved? I think I can guess what the results will be.

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Webmentions

  • The power of cross-platform engagement January 18, 2016

    […] A few days ago I talked about how you can improve interaction with 3 small tweaks. […]