Chapter 7

Driving Interaction

In This Chapter

Laying the groundwork for interacting

Adopting trending topics as conversation starters

Advocating humor as a means of engagement

Providing incentive for sharing

In earlier chapters of this book, we tell you how to help your brand build trust, maintain a social presence, and create connections as the core elements of social media engagement (SME). You can use a combination of these elements to then drive interaction, which is the topic of this chapter.

On the surface, as we initially discuss in Chapter 1, SME consists of reactions, interactions, and actions. A reaction is a fan’s quick-and-easy response to the content you share by way of social media, such as liking and favoriting. Interaction, which is ongoing (ideally), is the daily, back-and-forth communication between you and the members of your online community, your customers and prospects, and even the public at large, if you cast a wide net. Interaction isn’t only the icing on the cake — it is the cake. An action — which requires the most effort on the part of your audience — is a definitive activity that takes place, such as when someone signs an online petition, fills out a survey, requests information, or buys a product.

In this chapter, we tackle the icing and the cake: the actions that your community takes daily and then how to make interaction happen, how to inspire members to continue participating, and how to inspire your community to start that level of engagement with you.

Creating the Setting to Stimulate Engagement

Social media engagement is a continuous process of being present, connecting, and sparking conversations. Everything you do at first sets the stage for meaningful interaction with your community that in turn leads them to action.

When you prepare your social media engagement strategies, and follow through on them, you’re setting the stage for — and then becoming an integral part of — the action, reaction, and interaction that follows. Engaging is a give-and-take proposition: It’s one part proactive and one part reactive, with a healthy dollop of heart and soul. You may be representing your company, but you’re a human being, even behind the brand and logo. To want to make the choice to engage, your community must feel a level of comfort with you. For them, it’s a choice — help them make the right one.

Moving past the what’s-in-it-for-me? mentality

No one likes the person at the party who can’t stop talking about himself. One great temptation that you may have to work to overcome is the compulsion to share your product obsessively. Avoid the hard sell. Resist the urge to talk about “me-me-me.” Keep in mind that you do in fact have a product or service that you want people to buy: It’s you. Every time you push your services or focus solely on your products (rather than on your community) or even forget about your audience entirely, you lose.

Social media is first and foremost social. Your fans on Facebook, for example, want to know that you’re more than a logo. The people following you on Pinterest want to see in your pins what you like, not simply your own products. On Google+, your community shares your content because they like what you have to say, not because they want to help you sell something. (We cover these three platforms in Chapters 9, 11, and 13, respectively.)

Eighty percent of the content you share as you engage on your social media platforms should showcase your personality, share other people’s contribution, or highlight content that you think your audience would find valuable. Reserve the remaining 20 percent for links to your own content.

Building a space where people feel comfortable

Consider the places you feel most at home, where you can kick your feet up, say what you mean, and mean what you say. These social media platforms or forums may help you experience a certain level of comfort knowing that you can speak your mind without judgment and feel that you’re valued.

Whether you’re creating a community on Facebook, responding to tweets on Twitter, or chatting with your circles on Google+, look to build a space that feels comfortable for your audience. Create a place where everyone can be

Heard: Let people know that you’re listening and that you hear what they have to say. An environment that encourages open dialogue, answers questions, and offers valuable information creates a certain level of comfort.

Human: Knowing that the live humans who are behind the brand care about the community matters to your supporters. Whether you’re chatting and answering questions, offering VIP incentives (described later in this chapter, in the section “Providing Additional Incentives for Sharing”), or responding to frustration, your audience wants to know that you have emotions as well.

Humble: On any social platform that your brand manages, you have the opportunity to talk about any topic you want. Choose to make the topics of conversation more about your community than about you. Your fans will be honored that you focus on them, and they’ll be pleased that you avoid hard-sell tactics.

Certainly, it’s impossible to reach a level of perfection with everyone, but you should aim to create an environment that elicits enough comfort to encourage engagement.

A simple tip for getting your work shared beyond your current social media engagement platforms is this: Ask. Is it possible that getting people to share your message is simpler than you imagine? Engaging has always required strategy, planning, plotting, and reassessing, but sometimes, simply asking people to share, repost, retweet, or reblog prompts them to take that action.

Inspiring others to pay attention and care

The social media landscape is chock-full of people, brands, and businesses vying for attention. Everyone wants a slice of the pie. The challenge lies in attracting the level of attention you want without having to take to the sky, for example, with a message banner trailing an airborne biplane. (Even using that method, you would have to persuade people to point their noses skyward — and away from their mobile devices!)

Your next steps are to do all the little things, which we describe in this list, that encourage your audience to engage with your content because it matters to them:

Provide quality content. We can’t stress this point enough: Everything that you post online, on any of your platforms, must appropriately reflect your brand. If you provide thoughtful links, blog posts, and tweets, fans gravitate to you. Become known in your market as the go-to person or brand for useful and relevant information.

Stimulate conversation. Ask interesting questions. Share funny stories. Inspire your community to contemplate a topic. To encourage dialogue, initiate a conversation — rather than send link after link into the wide open social media space. A compelling question or idea can motivate your community members to respond; a lonely link can turn them away from the conversation.

Maintain visibility. The more present you are online, the more easily others can communicate with you regularly. If your community sees you and follows you on multiple platforms, and sees the quality content you’ve shared, they’re more likely — and able — to engage with you.

Know when silence is golden. This statement may seem to be a direct contradiction of our advice in the second paragraph in this list, but it isn’t. We simply mean that you have to recognize when enough is enough. Don’t clog your platforms with unnecessary ramblings. Make every post, tweet, and video count. Your audience doesn’t need to be bombarded by news of every move that your brand makes or every meal that you’re consuming — unless those events properly reflect your brand. Trying to keep up with too much information can overwhelm your community, and rather than pay attention, they might even tune you out.

Remember that kindness is king. This is important: Share relevant material from other people whom you trust and admire. Then not only do you strengthen relationships with others by praising them but your community also appreciates hearing this information from you — and you build your following in the process.

Emphasize your brand. If your brand has a unique characteristic, embrace it. If your brand contributes to a particular cause, talk about it. If a popular celebrity wears your brand’s clothes, for example, show that person in a video. As shown in Figure 7-1, the soccer superstar David Beckham was featured in a video that the clothing store H&M released on Google+ (to much approval from the brand’s fans). Whether you create makeup tutorials, answer tax questions in early April, or specialize in dog training, embrace what you do well — and in your own way.

Figure 7-1: The soccer superstar David Beckham helps showcase a clothing store.

Starting Conversations

With the goal of inspiring dialogue as a starting point, consider the ways that you might strike up a conversation with a stranger at a party. You certainly wouldn’t walk up with your business card in your outstretched hand. You wouldn’t shout, begin the conversation with a monologue about your achievements in business, or say hello and then walk away — not if you hoped that the person would ever respond to you and interact with you.

Conversations about you happen online whether you’re there or not. Your goal is to be a part of them, by listening, starting related conversations, joining others, and doing so appropriately. Knowing what to talk about can be half the battle.

Tapping in to trending topics

Finding universal themes that resonate with your audience can start the conversation. Current events and trending topics make for interesting fodder for dialogue with your community and fans. Be thoughtful in the way you discuss major world or national events when you engage online, and look for common ground with your audience to strengthen your connections.

Don’t talk about current events gratuitously, expect publicity, or turn your expressions of concern or support into sales pitches. Be sincere and use good taste when you start speaking about sensitive topics online. Keep the sales pitches separate lest you become considered both insensitive and opportunistic.

During the October 2012 disaster of Hurricane Sandy — a topic that was on everyone’s minds and trending on every social network — many brands punctuated their traditional platform messaging with thoughts and prayers and offers of assistance for people on the East Coast who were struggling. Delta Airlines, for example, offered condolences by way of its Twitter account to those affected by the storm, and it continued to respond to its community members who had questions about flights in the wake of the storm, as shown in Figure 7-2.

Trending topics can inspire creativity as you carry on conversations in your social media platforms. For example, February 22 is National Margarita Day. Who knew? But National Margarita Day was then a trending topic for two days in a row in 2013. For many businesses — restaurants, in particular — using the word margarita in their messaging helped make their message more visible.

Ask yourself: What are people talking about right now? Then join the conversation — but only if it's a fit for your brand. If it happens to be a particularly slow news day or you determine that the trending topics are too controversial or not reflective of your brand, head to Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) to see what other topics are trending online.

Lighting a fire with hot-button issues

If you want to light a communication spark, tackle the truly hot-button issues of any given day. But be prepared for potential backlash, and above all, make sure that these topics align with the image of your brand.

If you decide to wade into the waters of politics, religion, or culture, you will most certainly see some responses. Not everyone will agree with you, and some may even be negative and unkind. If your brand wants to side with a political candidate, express an opinion about the resignation of a church or government official, or take a stand on gun control, women’s rights, or same-sex marriage, you will see a divide in your community. Some will staunchly support you, and others will fall away, unfollow, unsubscribe, or unlike.

Figure 7-2: The Delta Twitter feed, during Hurricane Sandy.

After you initiate a controversial conversation, follow these guidelines as you continue to engage:

Stick to clearly worded statements. For example, rather than post an editorial opinion about a politician’s platform and stance on individual issues, you can make a positive, supportive statement that leaves no room for interpretation, like this: “Starwood Groceries is proud to support Gina Wonders for state senator, and we look forward to a bright future.”

Avoid insults. Insulting someone is never good form, especially in a public arena like social media. Doing so on hot topics invites a reverse attack. Yes, you want to start a conversation, but you don’t want to bring in the wolves.

Refuse to argue. By engaging on a hot-button issue, some people will view your statements not as the beginning of a dialogue, but rather as an opportunity to start an argument. It’s you versus them. You may find yourself on the receiving end of an attack. Especially in social media, an argument can easily escalate rapidly. Walk away instead. The potential for damage to your reputation isn’t worth it.

Accept differences of opinion. Recognize that not everyone will agree with you — that’s just fine. By opening the door to engage on a touchy subject, you’re inviting people to have an opinion about your opinion. Some will love you more for it, and others will decide that it isn’t their style. There’s no right or wrong. It’s perfectly acceptable for you and your audience to occasionally stand on different sides of the aisle.

You and the individuals who represent your brand should be careful to avoid sharing personal opinions about hot-button issues on company time. Be especially careful not to express personal opinions while using company accounts. Every tweet or post that’s shared from a company account is a direct reflection of your overall brand, and missteps can negatively affect your business.

Turning to humor

You like to laugh, and so do your fans. In an oversaturated social media world, humor stands out. The videos that make you laugh are almost always the ones with millions of views. The beautiful thing about making your customers smile and laugh is that you grab their attention without spending a penny.

On December 12, 2012, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter feeds alike were inundated with posts about the uniqueness of the day December 12, 2012 (12-12-12). The monotony of the “12 posts” on every social network was broken by the good people at Sesame Street, with humor and a flashback to childhood, as shown in Figure 7-3. Well played, Sesame Street, well played.

In an example of the beauty of one brand responding to another brand with a solid sense of humor (rather than with snark), AMC Theatres commented on a tweet from Oreo about sneaking its version of the perfect snack into a movie theater. The response from AMC, shown in Figure 7-4, was nothing short of perfection.

You can’t help but smile as you read AMC’s response tweet to Oreo. That’s what humor does: It makes the brand — both of them, in fact — relatable.

Figure 7-3: Whoever was running the Sesame Street Twitter account on 12-12-12 was on their toes.

When choosing humor as a means of sparking conversation, follow these suggestions:

Be consistent with your brand. Ensure that your sense of humor matches the perception of your brand. Whether you’re trying to elicit a loud guffaw or a quiet giggle, it needs to match who you are as a company. If slapstick humor isn’t your forté, aim for a milder effect.

Keep it clean. Witty humor is priceless. Tacky humor is worthless. You know which category you would rather be in.

Avoid highly sensitive topics. Take race, gender, politics, and other possibly inflammatory topics off the table. Entertain your community and make them laugh rather than offend them. Running the risk of causing outrage with risky humor isn’t worth your time or trouble. (For details on broaching hot-button topics safely, refer to “Lighting a fire with hot-button issues,” earlier in this chapter.)

Use humor sparingly. Funny is wonderful, in fact, it’s brilliant, but you don’t need to be funny all the time. Well-placed humor that happens occasionally is enough to stimulate successful engagement with your community. Attempting humor daily can fall flat if you don’t have the talent to sustain it.

Figure 7-4: AMC Theatres used humor to respond to another brand’s tweet.

Building engagement by way of inspiration

To help your community to move from their initial reactions of liking, pinning, and favoriting your content to a greater commitment, motivate them to engage with you on a deeper level by commenting, sharing, acting, or purchasing. To make this happen, you need to reach them via an emotional connection by tapping into trending topics or hot-button issues or turning to humor.

Excitement, surprise, gratitude, laughter, and heartfelt sympathy can all move your community to act. Every time they share a post on Google+, LinkedIn, or Facebook, comment on your blog, or retweet a tweet on Twitter, they’re giving their own, personal stamp of approval to you and your brand. That’s your goal.

In February 2013, Blood: Water Mission, a nonprofit organization with the goal of overcoming the HIV/AIDS and water crisis in Africa, began the 40 Day Water project, looking to inspire people online to drink only water between February 13 and March 30. The idea behind the project was to donate to the project the money saved by forgoing coffee, soda, wine, beer, and other drink options to help build wells in Uganda. The group made use of blogs, Facebook, and Twitter to share its goals and thank participants, as shown in Figure 7-5. By sharing an inspiring message, it aimed to involve more and more people in its campaign, tapping into people’s desire to do good deeds.

Figure 7-5: Thanking contributors publicly for supporting the 40 Day Water campaign on Twitter.

Providing Additional Incentives for Sharing

Staying in touch with the human side of social media engagement keeps you grounded in providing value to other people and helps you determine the incentives you should offer to motivate your community to share. We’re not here to dictate to you what’s valuable, though we urge you to create and share content that you believe is of value.

Knowing what’s valuable to your audience starts with knowing your audience. We say it often: “Know your business goals, and know your audience.” What’s valuable to one community won’t necessarily be valuable to another, and vice versa.

To determine value, consider these factors:

What your target market does online: Observe the people that you’re trying to reach — to see what they talk about and what they share — to understand their behavior and preferences. Do they prefer humor or human-interest stories that tug at the heartstrings? Do they publish content themselves or report it from other sources? Observation is a first step toward understanding.

Reactions from your community: If you already have a following, ask questions not simply to get a reaction but to truly learn more about them. Gauging how you’re doing regularly helps you determine your next step.

What best conveys your brand image: No doubt about it, you want your brand to be known for giving 100 percent effort, for listening carefully, and for providing quality customer service. Consider the qualities that are important to you and your brand — make sure that they’re front and center with every interaction in the online space. Allow these qualities to guide you in incentivizing your audience to engage with you.

The actions you’re trying to make happen: For example, is your ultimate goal to increase your fan base, to get people to start talking, to send traffic to your blog, to sell a service, or to encourage your community to purchase a product? Knowing your goal helps you decide what your incentive should be.

Watch how your target market acts on your competitor’s Facebook page or on Twitter or any other social network when they aren’t interacting with you. See what your competitors do well to stimulate interaction. Always stay true to your own brand, mission, vision, and goals; however, don’t engage online in a vacuum. Adopt and adapt best practices that you observe when they’re relevant to your brand.

Offering freebies and discounts

Every social media engagement platform is a place where you can offer something special to each and every one of your fans: VIP status. By choosing to engage with you on Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or even Instagram, your audience raises a hand to say, “I like you, and I want to know more about you.”

By connecting with you and following you in social networks, people are hoping for the inside scoop, for news that the average person doesn’t see, and for discounts or coupons like the one you see on the Sephora Google+ page, as shown in Figure 7-6.

Figure 7-6: Sephora offers tips and links to discounts and freebies on Google+.

Holding contests and sweepstakes

According to a recent online survey, a whopping 79 percent of Facebook fans are more likely to purchase from a brand they have already liked. So it’s no wonder that brands are making a concentrated effort to hold on to their audience.

One of the best ways is to entice people to your page is by offering this type of discount or even to run a contest or sweepstakes to keep them engaged and coming back. Though contests or sweepstakes can be run on any social network, they do especially well on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Before you set about holding one, ask questions to determine your goals: Are you looking to increase engagement with your current fans, grow your community, showcase a new product, or simply deepen brand awareness?

Following the laws and guidelines

This list describes a few legal and technical aspects to consider as you plan a contest or sweepstakes:

Know the law. Know the difference between contests and sweepstakes. Every state has different laws specifying the types of contests you can run, even on the Internet, and these laws are handled by the attorney general’s office in each state. For example, if you hold a sweepstakes, you cannot ask contestants to do anything else, such as submit a photograph as a critical part of entering to win — you submit a photograph to be judged in a contest.

Be very careful about mixing random drawings with judged contests and vice versa. We aren’t lawyers, so we encourage you to check with yours before holding contests or sweepstakes online.

Remember the rules. Whatever platform you choose, you must know the rules specifically about running contests. Are you allowed to hold them on the network? Can you announce your winner on your page when the contest ends? The Facebook terms of service, for example, state that you cannot hold contests on your page and that you must use a third-party application to house your contest elements. Do not jeopardize your brand or your standing on any social network by breaking its rules.

Choose an appropriate prize. As appealing as it may seem to offer a Kindle Fire or a brand-new iPad, giving one away will probably do nothing to showcase you or your brand. The device that you choose as a prize should give your fans a feel for who you are and what you have to offer. The prize should give winners a taste of your company.

Spread the word. Remember to share news about the contest on other platforms. If you’re asking people to “pin to win,” for example, you can still tweet about it and mention it on Instagram. The same advice holds true for Google+, YouTube, and Facebook.

For Facebook contests, the rules are quite specific about holding contests using a third-party app. Some popular apps for contests and sweepstakes include Wildfire (www.wildfireapp.com) and Strutta (www.strutta.com).

Setting the rules

For every contest or sweepstakes you run online, you should publish official contest rules. Usually, they’re composed by lawyers; however, you can use your favorite search engine to find templates online. These rules specify how the contest is run, its duration, who’s running it, the dollar value of prizes, who can enter and who cannot, including states where the contest cannot be held, and many other details that you should disclose.

On Pinterest, contests are visual and typically invite users to pin pictures, highlighting either the brand’s product or one that the user loves — or both. Girls Crochet Headbands ran a contest in January 2013; they posted photos of entrants and asked their fans to create a Pinterest board titled Girls Crochet Headbands Dream Football Outfit Contest, pin an entire outfit from the GCH site, and include at least one football-themed item. The sponsors of the contest listed official rules on the site and offered to answer questions on Facebook. A winner was chosen by the entire GCH staff.

Aligning your company with a cause

Nine out of ten consumers want brands to tell them the ways they're supporting causes, according to the Cone Cause Evolution Study. (http://ppqty.com/2010_Cone_Study.pdf) Why do they want to know? Because they often prefer to match their dollars with the brands that are "doing good" in the world on an ongoing basis. Your audience wants to know which causes are close to your company's heart.

The Con Agra Foods Foundation has been a longtime advocate in the fight against child hunger. The cause is so important to the company that it has started its own campaign, Child Hunger Ends Here, which renews a few times annually with the support of its family of brands. The campaign has its own website, shown in Figure 7-7, as well as a Facebook page and YouTube and Twitter accounts.

In choosing to align with a particular cause, be sure to find one that fits authentically with your brand or business. Picking a cause just to sound good feels fake to you and to your community. Connecting with a cause isn’t a fad — it’s a commitment.

Figure 7-7: This foundation offers consumers information about its campaign to end child hunger by linking to social networks.