Billions of dollars are spent each year on marketing the world's largest brands -- but the marketing move toward social networks was a whiplash reaction to the sudden presence of major
platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, that quickly demanded attention. As a result, brands have funneled most of their online customer engagement into social networks where they don't own the
experience or data -- and have no control over future terms of service.
Now that things have somewhat settled with social media, the industry is facing a pendulum
shift in the other direction. There is an opportunity for marketing teams to bring customer engagement back to their own Web site by offering a tailored social experience and ultimately reclaiming the
customer relationship.
But what does this look like, and how can brands keep up with the pace of technology developments? Below are five ways you can add a
social experience to your Web site to give your online community the fun, dynamic, and immersive experience your customers expect.
1. Engage users with
live Q&A sessions featuring your best talent
Using live Q&As establishes a two-way conversation between your brand and its
community. Rather than just feeding information out to your audience, an interactive Q&A session lets people ask what they want to know.
While many brands and
celebrities turn to Twitter to answer live questions, hosting a Q&A on your own site means you, not a third party platform, own that activity and traffic. But, be sure to maintain the level of
experience people get on those other platforms. Using a well-known celebrity or authority figure will significantly boost the reach and buzz surrounding the event.
2. Poll your fan base to find out what they think
You’ve probably seen a poll on CNN.com or other news site. Maybe you’ve
answered a brand’s question on Twitter. Voting and polling is a simple way to add a layer of timely interaction to your site. With just a single click, fans can submit their opinion and get
involved with your brand.
Questions can vary based on your own objectives, from who will win the big game, to who’s your favorite character, to what would be the perfect
new feature in an upcoming release. The key is to ask a relevant question and make it really simple for users to participate. You can also offer live results to encourage people to stick around, as
well as broadcast throughout your social outlets to generate further participation.
3. Show what’s hot now with real-time trends and
buzz
Real-time trends reflect the pulse of your community, showing which articles, people, topics, or products are the most popular among your
visitors at any moment in time. Whether you use graphics, bar charts, or ordered lists (think Twitter Trends), these not only add a real-time dimension to your pages, but also help today’s busy
consumer easily discover what’s hot from a source they trust. You’ll instantly gain more eyeballs for your content, as people are drawn in to see what the buzz is all
about.
For example, WWE incorporates real-time trending, with power rankings for its stars.
4. Sprinkle
sites with social image galleries
Chances are, your community is already posting great content about your brand on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
The next step is to pull in all that content dispersed across the Web and bring it back to your own site. The goal is to harness the innate power of imagery and videos to encourage users to spend more
time interacting with all your content.
Real-time galleries can be built around anything -- including a specific event, brand campaign, product, celebrity,
or even a single word. Integrate added social features, such as voting, chat and comments, to take engagement to a new level and encourage social participation around the content.
5. Keep up with today’s pace by streaming real-time news and conversations
People expect content to be pushed
to them, streaming in a never-ending, at-their-fingertips live feed. Any Web site that is static, or requires its users to refresh the screen to see new content, is going to be frustrating to use and
instantly appear antiquated. Real-time feeds and streams can create a fresh, dynamic experience on your Web pages.
A real-time newsfeed (similar to the
news ticker from TV programming) shows the latest news, be it about the company, product, industry, celebrity, sports figure or TV character. Likewise, you can bring a real-time activity feed that
aggregates all the discussions about your brand from offsite platforms like Twitter and Facebook. These feeds, like any other social element, should become a core part of the entire digital
experience, and not just siloed in a “Community” tab on the Web site.
Bringing it all home
The goal is not to abandon
or replace the activity on social networks; after all, platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter give brands an unprecedented opportunity to connect with fans. However, now is the time to bring
all this activity back home, to make your site the source for all these conversations, no matter how and where fans choose to interact with your brand.