7 Creative Ways to Engage with Your Customers Online

1. Build a Community or Group
There are several great ways to build an online community to more effectively interact and engage with your customers. Forums have been around for years and are still a widely used method of engaging with customers and allowing customers to engage with each other. Forums will likely still be around for the foreseeable future, but many companies are now finding it more advantageous to connect with customers on various social networks. Customers are already on these social networks every day, so instead of relying on customers to regularly visit your forum to interact and engage with you, why not bring the conversation to them on their social networks of choice?

2. Host a Webinar
A webinar is another innovative and effective way of engaging with your customers. They allow you to reach a large target audience on a platform that is very user-friendly and interactive. People love the visual aspects of a webinar with live video of the presenter, slides, graphics, and other interactive options. Webinars allow you to make a very personal connection with your current or potential customers. You as the presenter can also be more passionate, entertaining, and engaging than you could otherwise be by just writing a blog post and short e-book.

Pro Tip: Allowing users to tweet or email their questions or comments to you during or after the webinar is a great way to encourage more interaction with your audience.

3. Co-Create
Planning something new like a logo, redesigning your website, or launching something exciting? Consider reaching out to your customers to help you co-create something or at least provide their input and suggestions. While this would not be advisable in all situations, getting your customers’ input and assistance can really help you develop a much stronger bond. They will feel proud that they were part of the effort and process that made your product better.

4. Celebrate Together
Did you just reach 5,000 followers on Instagram? Did you attract new visitors to your site last month? When your company reaches milestones like these, celebrate your success with your customers and make them feel like they contributed to your success.

5. Offer Exclusive Content
Create content that is not available to the general public— You don’t necessarily have to charge for access to this content, but require users to at least go through a registration process to gain access to it. It will make them feel special and part of your exclusive group.

6. Solve a Problem Together
Is there a particular problem in your local area that solving would help your community? Ask for user interaction and input, and solve the problem together as a group. This will create a stronger bond, and everyone will feel more like a team.

7. Offer Ways to Interact
Do you have a blog? Ask questions on your platforms and allow visitors to leave comments. Sure, you’ll get some spam comments but it’s well worth the time and effort to publish good comments.

When people do leave good insightful comments, be sure to respond to them and thank them for participating in the conversation. If someone leaves a question for you in a comment, be sure to respond to their question. It looks bad to other visitors to see questions go unanswered.

Your site should also include links to your social profiles on sites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. This will allow your visitors to interact with you in more ways than one.

Technology today offers so many great ways to interact and engage with customers online. Take advantage of all the free tools and resources available today and devise a plan to better engage and interact with your customers online. If you don’t, your competition will.

What other ways have you found to be effective in engaging with your customers online? Share with us!

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