You know that feeling you get when someone rewards your thoughts/opinions on your Facebook page by liking your post? How about when a community of people retweet your latest world philosophies on Twitter?

Social proof and engagement are affirmations that your opinions matter and make a difference. Engagement online is not only a thing, it’s THE thing. If you are not engaging your customers in some way, then you are missing it.

A misconception that we run into at Hash is, “if you build it, they will come.” Unfortunately, 99.9% of the time that’s just not true. If you are not continually adding value to your site and engaging your users, then your website will likely be a lonely island in the middle of the vast Internet ocean — barren and deserted.

“But that’s a lot of work,” you exclaim. A lot of effort is spent working hard for your advertising dollars and spending them on a medium that is 1/10th effective as the social currency you gain by leveraging your website to engage your customer. Better stated: the time that goes into strategic marketing through your website goes 10x the distance it would in other mediums. So here are some ways you can earn social currency and engage your customers:

1. Blog: Yes, it works. No, it’s not overrated. You’re reading one now — case in point.
2. Surveys: Your customers know more about what they want than you do…even if you’ve been doing it for 20 years
3. Email marketing: Believe it or not, people do read emails and email newsletters. You have to fish where the fish are, and like it or not, we spend half our day in our inbox.
4. Social media: You know the industry that is creating the most billion dollar companies in history? Good thing to look into 🙂
5. Online communities/forums: People like to ask experts and experience veterans. More than likely there is a forum out there in your niche that you can establish yourself as a leader in the industry.
6. Games: People have a guilty pleasure with mind-numbing games on the Internet. Don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those things. If I had a dollar for every Farmville request I’ve received, you wouldn’t be reading this blog, because they don’t have great Internet service on the remote, tropical islands I would be on. Develop a simple game for your site that engages users.
7. Pop-ups: Those somewhat annoying little boxes that popup on sites. Miraculously, some people fill those out. I only think of ways to get them to go away! As they say, a bird in the hand (or an email address) is worth two in the bush. I never knew what that meant until now.

Hopefully you’re inspired to take your customer engagement to the next level. IMO, in marketing there isn’t a better return of ROI you can get on your time and money. As always, if you have any questions we’ll be around to Hash it out.