8 sure fire strategies for your social engagement campaign

Brian Chappell | June 27, 2008 | View Comments

Social media engagement by definition is any attempt at reaching out to another individual on the web. Traditionally this has taken the form of a PR pitch, but times are changing. There are many more avenues in which to engage a user, and the tactics that should be employed are taking on new forms. In large part, like most things, the more authentic and transparent you are with your social outreach the more successful you will be. If you think buying a list of emails, and spamming them with cookie cutter copy is going to work, then you might as well go back to work on marketing your reverse-funnel money making system.

Below are some great angles to take with regards to social engagement:

1. Start a contest and explain to the user that you are informing them that the contest is available for a limited time.
2. Offer an interview with the CEO of the company that you are engaging for and make it available for download on a limited basis.
3. Release a new product and ask for beta testers
4. Release news to a site per contingency that it will be exclusive, or that they will have their hands on the content before it is released mainstream.
5. Interview users and explain that their customer service feedback will be featured on the website.
6. Explain to the individual that their assistance will be rewarded with the actual product you are in charge of promoting.
7. Offer an interview with the author of the site, explain you are going to be posting it on your site with link backs and a press release of the interview itself.
8. Explain that the developer of the product is only a call away.

The key here is to develop a tactic that relays to the user the sense of exclusivity. If the user feels like you are sending something to them that was sent to 398,456 other people, then they are no doubt going to mark your email /correspondence as spam very quickly.

Bottom line here is you have to be creative when partaking in social outreach. Can you think of any other ideas?