Category: Social

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Social Branding Marketing Communications Digital Media Advice

How Restaurant Brands Can Dominate with Social Media Marketing

Restaurant Brands

In an era where social media presence is one of the biggest factors determining where people choose to eat, it’s not enough for restaurants to have great food and a good vibe––they must also be well-versed in the world of social media marketing. Why? Because with a million options to choose from, it’s the restaurants with the most drool-worthy and engaging Instagram pages that will stand out. 

If you’re a restaurant that needs to up their social media game, check out these 5 restaurant marketing strategies to help you make waves in a tsunami of options.

Tip 1: Know Your Audience and Platforms 

Before you can start posting content and engaging with your customers, you need to know who you’re talking to. The way you engage will need to change depending on your audience.

A 2022 survey from MGH, a marketing agency that specializes in restaurants, found that 53% of Millennial TikTok users have ordered from a restaurant after seeing it on the platform. Gen Z, on the other hand, is more attracted to authenticity and transparency in brands and is 72% more likely to support a restaurant that contributes to social causes. Your content needs to be curated to who you want to interact with so that you can build a loyal base of consumers.

Once you have the right content for your audience, you need to be conscious of where you are posting it. You are less likely to reach a Gen Z or Millennial audience on Facebook, yet you are bound to connect with those demographics on platforms like Instagram or TikTok. The success of your social media marketing strategy starts with knowing exactly who you are talking to and what you want to say.

Tip 2: Create Mouthwatering Visual Content 

Social media managers might argue your content needs to look as good as it tastes. And we’d agree. High-quality pictures and videos of your food you can practically smell and taste inspire your audience to come try it for themselves. 

Visual content that represents your brand’s personality will increase engagement across your social media pages. Wendy’s, a top-five restaurant brand with a mastery of social media, generates an average of 2,417 reactions on each post through their use of meme-like content and casual brand voice. A well-curated stream of high-quality content might be what motivates a consumer to walk into your restaurant instead of hitting up your competition.

Tip 3: Engage with Your Audience 

Engaging restaurant consumers online through comments, direct messages, and interactive content is key when it comes to standing out from the crowd. But engagement only gets you so far––your response time should also be as fast as possible. This is your chance to show off your brand’s personality while receiving feedback directly from your consumers. And it’s an opportunity to make a genuine community out of your consumer base.

Some ways you can increase engagement are by taking advantage of user-generated content or leveraging influencer partnerships. Posting interactive content to your feed that inspires your audience to take action can also help you motivate more people to interact with your page. 

Tip 4: Utilize User-Generated Content 

Taking advantage of user-generated content is the best way to build trust with your audience because people tend to trust the authentic experiences of other consumers. Bright Local, a web-based SEO tool, found that 84% of people trust online reviews as much as their friends’ reviews when deciding where to eat. In other words, let your audience become your advertisers. 

Your employees are your restaurant’s brand ambassadors, and get the most one-on-one time with guests. Have them encourage customers to write online reviews about their positive experiences whenever appropriate.

Tip 5: Promote Special Offers and Events 

Social media is one of the most effective ways to promote special offers, events, and discounts. Use it to your advantage by creating content that generates excitement in your audience and drives more traffic to your page. Brands like Chipotle and Sonic Drive-In use their pages to promote charity drives and to move merchandise. Promoting special offers and exclusive events gives people a reason to come dine with you and check back regularly for more. 

Implementing social media marketing in your restaurant is a great way to differentiate yourself from competitors and dominate the market––when done right. The best social media presence is one that is consistent, creative, and responsive to its audience. Social media marketing can help your restaurant: increasing brand awareness, enhancing customer engagement, building authenticity and trust, promoting special offers and events, and granting you direct lines of insight and feedback from consumers. By following the above advice and staying up to date on the latest trends, you are sure to come out on top. 

If you still aren’t sure about where to start with your social media journey, Push has experts that would love to help. Check out our full menu of services and work with other restaurants here.

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Real Estate Social Marketing Communications Digital Media

How to Plus Up Your Real Estate Brand’s Online Presence

How to Plus Up Your Real Estate Brand’s Online Presence

Establishing a strong online presence is essential to any brand’s marketing success. In today’s digital age, consumers can interact with a business online before ever meeting face to face with it. In fact, 97% of consumers use the internet to search for local businesses. And the real estate industry is no exception. With most home buyers and sellers starting their processes online, it’s imperative that real estate businesses have consumer-facing content to help potential clients navigate their services and offerings. Check out the following real estate tips and learn about the impact of digital marketing on real estate business success and how you can elevate your online presence to help make your brand stand apart from the competitors.

Tip #1: Create or update your website.

People want to work with brands they trust, and with so many people turning to the internet first, your website is may be your first introduction to potential clients. Essentially, your website should be a direct reflection of your brand, communicating everything from your services to your real estate expertise and business goals. It should also be as visually appealing as it is easy to navigate. This combined with concise content will draw in visitors and keep them on your page long enough to find out more about your offerings and your brand. Here are a few key content boxes to check off on your website:

Whether you need to build your brand’s website or your current one needs an update, hiring a professional website designer will help your website perform properly and connect potential clients to your business.

Tip #2: Establish a strong social media presence.

Social media has become a digital marketing power tool. It gives brands a way to connect with their audience on a personal level, build a reputation, trustworthiness and loyalty right at everyone’s finger tips. Upgrade your engagement with potential clients and new followers through these simple strategies.

SEO research

Tip #3: Create an SEO blog.

Practicing SEO on your real estate website is vital to reaching a larger audience of potential clients and scaling your rank on Google. You can do this by regularly posting and updating a blog with topics like, “Real Estate Marketing Trends 2022,” and even fun, personal accounts. However, in order to optimize your blogs, you have to include keyword in your content. Then, down the road, you can tweak your SEO strategy to find what works for your business. And don’t forget to add a bio at the end of your blog introducing your brand to your potential clients. With a balance of informational and engaging topics, you can establish your brand as an industry expert that is also relatable and approachable.

For more ideas on content for real estate marketing and how to elevate your brand’s online presence, check out these tips to build engagement on your social media profiles. You can also check out the work we’ve done for our brands here. We know creating and updating a website is no easy feat. If you’d like to connect with us for more information, don’t hesitate to reach out.

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Tourism Social Branding Advice Trends

How to Attract Skiers and Snowboarders to Visit Your Resort

How to Attract Skiers and Snowboarders

With ski season just around the corner, resorts are ramping up advertising to lure in the next season of skiers and snowboarders ready to hit the slopes. The good news is that travel demand and snow sports are growing rapidly. The trickier part is how to differentiate yourself from the competition. We’ve compiled a few digital marketing tips to help elevate your tourism marketing efforts.

Create a personal connection with guests 

People love to build traditions around travel, so incentivizing your guests to make your resort the place that they visit year after year only makes sense. You can offer a loyalty program that rewards frequent guests by providing discounts on amenities, resort services, dining and more. Or consider extending annual seasonal offers that guests can look forward to and plan ahead for.

Offer event packages

In a similar vein, you could consider creating special event packages that include accommodations, food and beverage specials, and event space that make

thumb tack on a calendar with the word event on the calendar

 your resort stand out from the pack for those looking to make plans for a large group. Keep in mind that per person pricing can often be an important selling point to those looking to book conference space, meetings, group events or weddings.

Have a sound social media strategy 

It’s no secret that you need to be taking advantage of social media, especially given how picturesque content is for the ski and snowboard industry, but it’s important to be consistent and strategic. Put plans in place to create your own content—beauty shots, behind-the-scenes footage and educational videos are a great place to start. Then execute on social media best practices for organic content—post on a schedule, use hashtags to help you gain visibility, jump on trends or memes if they are appropriate for your brand and repost or share content captured at your resort. 

Reach out with email marketing

Use your email list to send out monthly newsletters with promotional offers, discounts on equipment, snow conditions, exciting events at your resort, local attractions and more. You can also use email to break down more complicated procedures like booking a reservation, which can increase sales by an average of 20%, according to a DemandGen Report. And personalizing your emails with a special offer could increase those numbers ever more.

laptop computer open to an email application

For more marketing ideas, check out our work here and get in touch to learn more about how Push can help take your brand to the next level. 

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Real Estate Social Branding Advice Trends

Marketing Your Real Estate Brand In A Seller’s Market

Marketing Your Real Estate Brand

It’s no secret. A seller’s market can hold quite the advantage over home buyers. Although home prices  have been steadily increasing in the United States, the rising costs aren’t stifling buyers. In fact, most houses were purchased through a real estate agent or broker in 2020 and 73% only interviewed one real estate agent to help them with their home search. While some realtors may question the importance of marketing a home or even their own brand considering the current market, there are several benefits to building awareness and getting in front of home buyers. Learn how you can upgrade your brand with these unique real estate marketing ideas to win over clients and prospects with the following tips.

TIP #1: CREATE A NEWSLETTER

Keep in touch with your clients and prospects with a neighborhood newsletter, perfect for sharing valuable, local information through print or digital resources. You can include news, helpful tips, events, recipes—you name it—anything your community will find useful should be considered for your newsletter. You can also showcase client success stories and listings to keep your real estate brand relevant with your audience. And it doesn’t have to be anything fancy—just enough to keep your brand in the front of their mind and set your brand up as a credible source for the community. 

TIP #2: UPGRADE YOUR DESIGN & CREATE MERCHANDISE

Appeal to more prospects by considering a design rebrand. Show them and your current clients you’re in touch with modern times. While a complete overhaul may not be necessary, you can elevate your real estate marketing materials like your business cards, sell sheets, brochures and letterheads with a few new details to show you can adapt to the ever-changing environment around us. And get creative with your new and improved designs. Slap it on some merch and free swag to give and get your brand name on the street.

TIP #3: HAVE STRONG ONLINE & SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

We already know most home buyers only interviewed one real estate agent to help them with their home search, which is why it’s immensely important to get your brand in front of prospects as quickly, and efficiently, as possible. One of the best ways to do this is by creating or updating your real estate business’ website. Keep it clean, up-to-date and easy to navigate to make the home buying experience simple and effortless for your clients and prospects.

One key component you should include on your site are your listings—and consistently update them. This will increase traffic to your page by prospects regularly searching for new properties. You can also add a helpful or interesting element, like a mortgage calculator or client testimonial video, to delight your website visitors and keep them there long enough to learn more about your services and offerings.

Besides updating and creating content for your brand’s website, you can also create a Zillow profile and run paid social media campaigns to get your name in front of a larger crowd and lead them back to your website. However, if you decide to run ads on social media, you must ensure your website is optimized for mobile because your target will most likely see these ads on their phones.

For more luxury real estate marketing ideas and how you can elevate your brand’s online presence with digital marketing tactics, check out these tips. You can also find the work we’ve done for our brands here. If you’re not sure where to start or need help updating your brand, don’t hesitate to reach out and connect with us for more information.

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Social Marketing Communications Education

How To Plan a Marketing Campaign for a Single Degree Program at a University

How To Plan a Marketing Campaign for a Single Degree Program at a University

Most universities offer an impressive array of services, programs and resources for students. And while that’s a great benefit to students, sometimes the messaging can feel too broad, unfocused or even overwhelming. That’s why honing in on a single degree program that your university excels in can be a successful marketing strategy. Here are several tips for bachelor’s degree marketing and how to effectively communicate about one program or degree to prospective students. 

Identify Your Audience

The first step to college degree marketing is to identify your audience. Understand who exactly you are talking to and why they would be interested in the program you’re advertising. This helps you to identify the right messaging and media channels to pursue. As suggested by Parthenon Group, consider segmenting your audience into these six groups to better address their individual needs:

  • Aspiring Academics:  “Traditional students,” mostly 18-to-24-year-olds with a focus on academics
  • Coming of Age : Mostly 18-to-24-year-olds who have yet to decide on what to focus on.
  • Career Starters : 8-to-24-year-olds who are using college as a springboard for their future careers.
  • Career Accelerators : Older working students looking to advance in their field of work, usually online.
  • Industry Switchers : Older students looking to switch fields.
  • Academic Wanderers : Those who are getting into college later in life who believe that a degree will open up doors for them.

Market On Social Media

With 84% of 18-29 year olds using social media, it only makes sense to focus your efforts here to get your message out. Some tactics to consider for content could be to feature successful alumni on your social media channels or student and faculty achievements. Another way to reach potential students could be through student social ambassadors—think influencers for your university. These students can reach the exact audience you’re after with fresh, engaging content that gives people a closer look at the degree program you want to highlight. 

Create a Highlight Reel

A well-done video can go a long way to get people excited about learning a new skill or promoting the benefits of the degree program and what makes it unique and desirable. The content for the video could feature the technical and academic skills related to the program that will support students throughout their career, the hands-on experience that students get in the program and information about financial aid. This video by Middlesex Community College shows how students can learn a skill and land a good job in less than a year while having access to state-of-the-art machinery.

Design Landing Pages That Convert

Make sure your first impression is a good one. If you’re linking out to a landing page from a social post or ad, make sure that it is just as effective on mobile as it is on desktop, as 1 out of 5 potential students use mobile only to access the Internet. Your landing page should be SEO friendly as well and crafted to answer the questions students may already be asking themselves in order to capture the “warm” visitors who are seeking a program like yours. And don’t forget, the better your landing page, the more time prospective students are likely going to spend on your site.

If you are also looking for ways to execute a marketing campaign for your university, check out our article that discusses 5 Lessons From Successful University Marketing Campaigns. For more university degree marketing tips or ideas on how to market your single degree program, check the work we’ve done for universities in the past. And if you need more inspiration or help, we’re here to help take your brand to the next level, so don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more.

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Restaurant Social Branding Trends

Four Hot Ideas to Promote Your Pizza Restaurant During 101 Days of Summer

Four Hot Ideas to Promote Your Pizza Restaurant

Pizza is no doubt a tried and true favorite of restaurant goers, and that’s been especially true over the past few years. Pizza restaurant sales and the number of pizza restaurants have been on the rise for the past decade. And with dine in, takeout and delivery combined, sales reached over $46 billion in the U.S in 2020.

But with that success also comes a challenge to stand out from the pack. Whether you’re selling New York-style pizza by the slice or fine-dining artisan pizza, you may need to adjust your marketing strategy from time to time to keep attracting new customers, engage existing customers and convert interested visitors into loyal customers.

Here are a few pizza restaurant marketing strategies to help you create some buzz and promote your business this summer. 

Go Behind the Scenes 

One easy way to increase engagement and attract new customers is to pivot your social media strategy. One successful approach to that is to post behind-the-scenes content that gives your customers insight into your business that they usually wouldn’t see. It’s great way to show off the care you put into your food and brand and a fun way for guests to get to better know your staff. Consider videos of your food prep or cooking process to show off what makes your menu really unique or feature staff members to help make people feel more attached to the people behind the brand. 

Create a Summer Limited-Time Offer

New news is always good news in the restaurant world. Generate buzz, urgency and sales with a special menu item available only for summer. Explore seasonal ingredients, add a new menu item or find a way to enhance a favorite that guests currently love. An exclusive and innovate LTO can go a long way to reengage people with your restaurant or to earn some love and attention from bloggers or the media. 

Offer Pizza By the Slice 

You could also drum up some excitement by looking at how you offer or bundle current favorites.  If it works with your operation model, offering pizza by the slice is a way to entice new customers to try your pizza or attract customers during different times of the day. Draw in the lunchtime crowd with a combo meal that includes a slice of pizza, drink and side. Or if you’re in a place with foot traffic, you could attract a younger crowd looking for a late night bite by offering pizza by the slice. 

Design Summer Deals for Groups

Pizza marketing ideas or campaigns don’t have to be complicated. It could be as simple as offering deals for groups over the summer. You could draw in summer interns looking for a place to grab lunch together or a summer sports team that wants to grab a bite after a weeknight game. And with pizza, group deals are always going to be a hit. Consider creating new combo packages that feature pizza, wings, breadsticks and dessert, for example, that make large orders easy for groups or offer discounts to large groups on your regular menu. 

How Can We Help? 

If you know you need to make a splash with marketing this summer, but aren’t sure where to start, Push has over two decades of doing just that—check out our work with restaurants for yourself. We’d love to hear from you and see how we can help. 

Categories
Social Branding Lifestyle Trends Education

The Future of Education Marketing in the Metaverse

The Future of Education Marketing in the Metaverse

As you know by now, the idea of the metaverse has started to gain more and more popularity as many leading companies and brands are starting to shift their attention to the newest frontier, Web 3.0. This next evolution of the internet sees online experiences evolving, creating communities where users can immerse themselves within a virtual world or brand.

Metaverse Marketing

Although the term metaverse has just recently gained mainstream relevance, there have already been versions of the metaverse that companies have been collaborating with. Games like Roblox partner with brands like Gucci and Vans to create visual worlds that users can explore to learn more about the brand. 

Tips for education marketing in the metaverse

But these virtual experiences aren’t limited to just businesses—education marketing in the metaverse can give prospective students a better understanding of your school and what you have to offer. Here are some tips for education marketers on how to effectively leverage the metaverse to promote your institution.

Tip #1 – Prospective student meetings

Through the power of the metaverse, enrollment teams will have the ability to meet with prospective students in virtual rooms, instead of being separated by hundreds of miles.

Meta, formerly Facebook, is already using settings like this in their new virtual technology called “Horizons Worlds,” providing users with virtual spaces where your avatars can meet with others. These virtual experiences can create a sense of intimacy that is lost on a video or phone call.

Tip #2 – Virtual campus tours

Bring your campus to life in the metaverse and allow prospective students to take a tour of your campus. Virtual tours can include a game day experience, giving future students the best seat in the house for the big rivalry game. You can show how your school’s traditions are truly unique and allow the guests to take part.

Research shows that students who visit a campus before applying to a college are two times more likely to matriculate. These experiences are essential to the admissions process, and taking it to the metaverse allows potential students to be fully immersed into the campus no matter where they are.  

Tip #3 – Virtual in-class learning

With the power of VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), your online learning experiences can be transformed to immerse students in their education. 

In recent years, online learning has seen a significant increase, but students are claiming that this new mode of learning leads to feelings of isolation. These online learning environments often lack the human interaction that in-person classes provide.

Marketing the use of VR and AR in your online classrooms can show prospective students that your programs look to provide the community and interaction that many online learning programs currently lack. Instead of students and professors being trapped inside boxes on a screen, they can walk around and interact with one of another.

Why Push?

Here at Push, we’re always looking for ways to maximize the reach of our higher education brands, and with the increasing potential that the metaverse holds, we want to make sure our brands are utilizing the technology to its fullest potential. To continue learning more about how you can grow your college or university’s enrollment, check out how content marketing funnels can grow student enrollment.

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Restaurant Social Marketing Communications

How Restaurants Can Use Cause Marketing to Enhance Branding

How Restaurants Can Use Cause Marketing to Enhance Branding

Restaurant owners and marketers know more than anyone how important it is to form a strong relationship with customers. Creating shared values promotes brand loyalty and increases word of mouth. Cause marketing is one way restaurants can connect with their customers.

As a branding strategy, cause marketing is on the rise and is becoming significantly more important as millennials expect more from the places they do business with. They don’t just want a nice restaurant experience with a good atmosphere, they want to know that their hardearned dollars are doing something for the greater good. In fact, it’s been reported that 91 percent of millennials are willing to change their buying habits to support brands that rally behind a social cause.

So how can you implement cause marketing into your business? Here are five tips to take your strategy to the next level:

1. Align with a cause that actually makes sense for your brand.

Finding a cause that is the right fit for your restaurant is crucial to any successful cause marketing program. With hundreds of social causes to choose from, there should be one that speaks to the heart of your brand and even the hearts of your guests.

2. Commit to your cause.

Whether you’re giving a portion of your proceeds to a non-profit or committing to eliminating food waste by the way you dispose of unused food, you want your team to have total buy-in. Showcasing your whole team’s commitment to the cause and publicizing these efforts can help to build a connection between your restaurant and customers.

3. Leverage your cause in your marketing efforts.

No good deed should go unnoticed. If your brand is supporting a social cause, you may win some earned media through press coverage. Being a socially responsible brand can earn you an advantage over competitors. Your restaurants’ involvement with a charity may be your guests’ deciding factor when looking at their dining options. The content of this document/layout will be officially proofread prior to the final approval of the art or copy document.

4. Authenticity is a must.

If the cause chosen is one your brand is truly passionate about, it should sell itself. Let the message organically show through your marketing choices. Here are a few cause marketing examples that were well received because of their authenticity. Consumers know an inauthentic message when they see one, which could potentially result in catastrophe for your restaurant’s image.

5. Learn how Push can help with your restaurant cause marketing.

We’re always here to help you strategize and execute a strong cause marketing campaign or platform. Just take a look at the work we did for Sonny’s BBQ. Restaurant store design, marketing strategy and brand positioning are a few other ways we can help your restaurant build a strong, relevant foundation for its future. Check out more of our work here.

Not sure if an agency is right for your restaurant? Our recent article about bringing a branding agency on board might help you decide!

Categories
Retail Social Branding Marketing Communications

4 Ways to Use Social Media for Retail to Drive Sales

4 Ways to Use Social Media for Retail to Drive Sales

Social media platforms are very powerful tools for brands. And while their primary use is for sharing content and customer engagement, there are ways to use social media platforms to drive sales. Here we discuss 4 ways brands can use social media to make their cash registers ring. 

Identify the correct platform to activate.

Different social media platforms are utilized in different ways by different audiences. Knowing what you want to say is great, but knowing where best to say it is equally important. Your message, your offer and your desired audience should dictate which social channel you choose to activate. While not all social channels will directly drive in-store sales, all platforms should be used in ways to help you reach this goal. To get the right social media mix, you need to analyze each social channel to determine where your audiences are and how they behave on the platform. Then tailor your campaign messaging and calls-to-action accordingly. 

Use your social media channels to showcase your brand’s voice.

Social media platforms give brands the opportunity to speak directly to their followers, fans and the public at large. In fact, 60% of consumers engage with brands across their social channels  before making a purchase.  By consistently using your brand’s voice across all channels, your current and potential customers will better understand who your brand is, how you speak, and what you stand for to determine whether or not they want to engage, interact, and ultimately purchase something from you.  That’s not to say you say the exact same things in the exact same ways across all channels. There is a time and a place to let your brand’s hair down if you will. For example, Wendy’s brand voice on Twitter is notoriously irreverent, sarcastic and even combative, whereas their voice on Facebook, while still fun and irreverent, dials down the combativeness and dials up the legit customer service responses.

Make your store accessible and shoppable directly on social media platforms.

Of all the retail social media tips, this one is a bit of a no-brainer, but critical to driving sales, both online and offline: make sure customers can access your store without leaving their current social media platform. At the very least, you should provide your store’s key information on all of your social channels—URL, physical address, phone number, hours of operation, etc. But various social channels now offer ways to showcase and sell your products within their platforms. For example, Instagram allows you to create a shoppable feed where users can view and purchase tagged products within lifestyle images and checkout without ever leaving the app. Your online efforts pay dividends offline as well. After following a brand on social media, 84% of people will visit the brand’s physical store closest to their home. 

Increased Reach through paid ads.

As social media feed algorithms continue to evolve and organic reach declines, paid social advertising is a great way to reach your desired audiences. Most social media platforms provide the powerful ability to create custom audiences to advertise to that can greatly increase traffic to your business. With an effective paid social media strategy, you will be able to see tangible data and results that could provide key insights into your overall target audience and positioning in the marketplace. You can even tailor ads to specific objectives like click-throughs, reach, impressions and engagement. These tools allow you to truly streamline your message and customize your ads to make them extremely effective with the audiences that matter to your brand. 

We hope you find these tips helpful, but if you need assistance with retail social media marketing, don’t hesitate to reach out—407-841-2299.

Categories
Social Branding Advice

Six Ways to Succeed with Community Management

Six Ways to Succeed with Community Management

Even though social media algorithms are constantly changing, the overall purpose of social has remained the same—to make connections and share your authentic self, as a person or as a brand. Planning, creating and sharing content is a large piece of social media development, but community management is just as important. It helps to foster relationships with your followers and lets you connect with them one-to-one. It also lets them know you’re listening and that their voice matters as you respond to both positive and negative feedback. Here are six community management tips that can help grow your engagement and further your success on social. 

  1. Don’t just be a brand on social. Have a voice and a personality that makes you stand out from the rest. Create a persona and imagine you are responding to followers in person vs from behind a screen.
  1. Use captions on content that encourages engagement. Ask people to tag friends, caption posts for the brand, respond to favorites with emojis, choose between different options via comment responses and more. There are so many fun, interactive and creative ways to pull your followers in and make them want to stop scrolling and start paying attention to your content.
  1. Develop content that people want to save and come back to later, share with their friends or ask questions about it. Cooking recipes, fun experiments, interactive quizzes, children’s activities and how-to’s are all perfect for this type of content development.
  1. Acknowledge positive interactions when your followers engage with your posts. Responding to and liking comments is a great way to connect with others. Keep in mind that many social media users feel the ultimate compliment is for a brand is to share their content to the brand’s page. This is called user-generated content (or UGC for short). Brands can go even further by re-sharing Instagram Stories that others have tagged them into their own Stories.
  1. Try to address any negative feedback as quickly as possible. Imagine the customer is face-to-face vs. online. Each person on your social media team is part of the brand’s customer service team. If someone was standing right in front of you, you’d want to respond as quickly and calmly as possible. The same goes for interacting on social media. Don’t let the comment or negative feedback linger for too long. Always apologize first and foremost, then provide a solution in a polite, even-keeled and kind tone.
  1. Respond to negative feedback or concerns publicly and then move the conversation private. If you don’t respond to negative comments and feedback, it makes the brand look unresponsive. Analyze the problem via a private message to determine how to solve the issue. Keep in mind, freebies aren’t always the answer as this can encourage more negative responses. Sometimes, customers just want to be heard and acknowledged.

Overall, don’t overanalyze your interactions. Just remember to be a brand steward and keep the conversation lighthearted and fun as often as possible. There is a reason your followers are engaging with your brand or a reason they’ve reached out. The worst thing you can do is not be responsive at all. Keep the conversation going, stay friendly and at the end of the day, have fun with it!