Social Media Conversions Require More Than One-Click Engagements
You will never be able to build relationships with one-click engagements alone. They can be a part of your toolkit but, they should be the tiniest tool in your box and should ideally be used as part of a progressive engagement strategy.
One-click social shares (reaching out and tapping or touching someone on a social network), under the guise of engagement, appears to be a prevalent practice.
This includes practices like:
- Liking a comment or an update
- (Re-)sharing someone’s link
- Retweeting
- One-click connection requests
- Following back
We even have “no-click” engagement tools for totally automated sharing, content curation, and following back.
We Like Things Fast and Easy
Whether we like to admit it or not, many of us feel overwhelmed with the need to be active and engaging, and, as a result, we engage in what I like to call “mindless tapping and sharing.”
I myself am guilty of this as well. Instant gratification trumps quality. Furthermore, we ourselves want to make it fast and easy for others to share our stuff so we install one-click social share buttons on our articles.
Are one-click engagements nice gestures? Sure. You are making a tap, saying “hi” and, in many cases, you are sharing valuable information with your networks while promoting others. But, are they anything more than that? Do they optimize your social sales effectiveness and are you truly engaging?
They say a brand needs about 5-7 touchpoints from the same person for them to start recognizing it. But what kind of touchpoints? If someone simply likes your comment, will they remember you? Very unlikely. One-click engagement may not be contributing to branding at all.
Start With Your Goals
Some of my goals are to:
- Be visible and memorable
- Attract the right people
- Discover and build relationships (new and old)
- Increase my revenues
If these are your goals, too, let’s explore some ways that you can achieve them:
Personalize Every Engagement
Use their name! When you use someone’s name early and often, you add tremendous impact to your message that really gets their attention. If you use their Twitter handle, there is a reasonable likelihood that they may even be notified.
Do not use auto-direct messages. I flat-out hate auto-DMs and, to the best of my knowledge, I have never seen one that includes my name. This fundamental fact also makes them glaringly obvious and the message you are delivering is …“You aren’t important but, please like my page.” Sorry but, it’s just plain rude.
Try to personalize every engagement. You want to stand out from the crowd and the noise and social media have plenty of both!
- When tweeting anyone’s link, take a minute to find their @handle and tag them. You are also demonstrating that you actually read the article!
- Instead of endorsing someone on LinkedIn, recommend them. The five minutes that you will spend, particularly when it is unexpected, will really make someone’s day!
- Instead of liking a post, leave a comment. Instead of liking a comment, reply to it!
- Don’t one-click retweet, retweet with a comment!
- Surprise them by sharing one of their articles when they least expect it.
- Start with a template invitation to connect on LinkedIn and then, before hitting send … personalize it!
This same rule holds true when you are congratulating someone on a new job or saying “Happy Birthday.” When you receive these notifications on LinkedIn or Facebook, you can one-click or you can invest two seconds and personalize your message.
But don’t stop there! Instead of simply asking your Linkedin audience, create a poll. Instead of uploading a video on TikTok, participate in someone’s Q&A. Diversify your incoming engagements by making use of new features.
And What About People Who One-Click Engage With You?
Just because somebody one-clicks you, this does not mean that there may be no value in this action. After all, they did direct-click your way. You need to understand…
- Who are they?
- How did they choose to engage (via what service and in what form)?
- Why did they engage?
- What were they responding to?
- Is there potential here?
All of these factors are very important considerations and may be used to uncover hidden motivations and interests.
For example, somebody retweets and likes a new product announcement that you just made, and then simultaneously adds you to a list titled “Services I need to investigate.” There may be a potential business there. Based on your findings, you may wish to engage back, but do so in a meaningful way.
Hence one-click social metrics still need to be tracked, just use some judgment when acting upon them. If you are serious about social media as a sales channel, you need to track engagements for your channels as well as your competitors. There’s this tool from webceo.com for you to keep up with multiple social metrics which I use:
But instead of simply watching them grow (or fall), use the data to make actionable decisions:
- Why is my competitor suddenly seeing this uptick in engagements??
- Why are my numbers stagnant? What can I change?
- What are my top channels in terms of engagements?
- What are my top channels in terms of traffic?
Answering these and many other questions will help you adjust your social media engagement tactics to make them more effective.
It’s All About Relationships
You will never be able to build relationships with one-click engagements alone. They can be a part of your toolkit but, they should be the tiniest tool in your box and should ideally be used as part of a progressive engagement strategy. Always compare any social media engagement to those standards that you practice in real life.
Relationships develop when we demonstrate to others how important they are to us as people and as friends. Business is absolutely no different. Show me that you value our relationship. Be different and be memorable.