Automation is the consequence of rapid technological advancements. Many view automation as a negative thing that will take over our jobs. And while the concerns are there, it has zero impact on our topic.
Audience engagement is an area of digital marketing that can have a significant impact on your brand. Audience engagement is closely tied with brand awareness, and both can have a positive impact on each other. That’s not to say that it won’t backfire on you. Automation can either make or break your brand’s name.
If done the right way, it can drive sales and increase audience engagement. But what’s the right way to do it? What tips and strategies can you implement to make it work in your favor? How to avoid backfiring on you? We will hopefully shed some light and provide automation tips to increase audience engagement.
1. Create Social Replies
This first tip is closely tied to social media platforms that fundamentally use hashtags; clear examples are Twitter and Instagram.
Both platforms make it possible for a user to engage with a brand by simply using the brand’s hashtag in their post. This is a popular way for the audience to try and converse with their favorite brands, and you have to capitalize on that.
When someone mentions you in a post, you can use that to your advantage by replying to the person. But, instead of doing it yourself, automation can do it for you.
However, your response mustn’t be generic; otherwise, people will see through it. Below are a couple of tips on how not to get mistaken for a spam bot.
· Implement humorous replies
Instead of giving people the generic response, why not add some personality and humor to your replies? If you simply created a reply that goes along the lines of “Check out our website at bit.ly/blablabla” then people will instantly recognize that you use a bot.
And while there isn’t anything wrong with it, you have to be careful in how you reply. A better example would b to add the following: “Thanks for posting. We currently have a contest and you can join on this link”.
· Make them want to
Even if you used the before-mentioned reply, that still doesn’t guarantee you people will click on your link. You need to make them want to click on it. If you have tens of thousands of followers on your social profiles, nothing guarantees that the person in question will win the prize. So, you need to push him a little. To do this, a good thing to add would be to specify the prize.
2. Welcoming Messages
Automation can also be used to welcome your visitors every time they visit your socials or website.
Welcoming messages are very easy to notice. They mostly pop up in the bottom right corner whenever you visit a website or pop up in a chat box when on a brand’s social pages.
Welcoming messages have a simple task at hand of welcoming the visitor. They display text us “Hi, welcome to our website. Feel free to look around, if you need anything simply type in here”.
These messages are implemented by bots that have been preplanned before to include a message along with their response.
It’s an excellent way to help navigate a person through your website, and an even better way to help him with all his needs and questions.
For more information about automated welcoming messages, make sure to visit botsurfer.com
3. Automated Sign-Up Forms
Since we live in an age where data is very important, a great way to use this feature is to create sign-up forms where your visitors can willingly make an account with you.
However, it’s hard to make a person willingly sign up with you, and he may need some pushing. Because of this, you can use automation to be that pushing factor, but the forms must be formatted carefully to intrigue the applicant.
Here are a few tips on how to create your forms:
· Keep it simple
People hate it when they have to fill up long forms that take a lot of time. Instead of going this route, try to simplify things.
· Give them something
Another way to make a person sign up with you is to incentivize the process. Let’s say you’ve recently created a digital marketing campaign to increase the number of people that sign up on your website.
A great way to eliminate hesitation and make the people finish the process is to give them something for their troubles.
This could be a voucher, a coupon, and even include free shipping for a limited time. The thing is to give them something that will make them willingly sign up with your brand.
· Customize Your Forms
Let’s say you’re running a contest and you want more people participating.
A great way to gather data, make people sign up, and increase audience engagement is to customize the forms to suit the participants.
For example, you could provide two prizes that the participants can choose from. You could then ask the participants to share your campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and promise them a better chance of winning.
This not only increases your brand, but other people will see the shared post from the participant. If they like what they see, they too will do the exact same thing. And so on, so on.
The point here is that all the while people are sharing you, you are getting new customers, engage with new visitors, and more people sign up to your website.
This simple process of automation can have a significant impact on your brand. Not only are all three tips excellent for audience engagement, but they can have an equal impact on your brand.
Increasing audience engagement through automated processes may be the best way to go about in 2020. The popularity of such technologies is predicted to grow, and why wouldn’t you want to be a part of it?
