5 ways to create meaningful social media engagement with customers
By Claire Nicholson and Yasmin McLaughlin | Reading time: 3 minutes
Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives within the last 20 years and has allowed the worldwide scientific community to be more accessible than ever. A 2018 study from Nature revealed that 47% of scientists use social media to keep up to date with the latest news and discoveries in their fields. Since then, our use of social media has only increased and is expected to be well over 50%, making social media an exceptional tool for engaging with current and potential customers around the world. However, maintaining an engaging social media presence as a company can be a time-consuming process that requires a clear strategy for the content you post. This blog post will highlight five things to consider when developing a social media strategy to create meaningful engagement with current and potential customers on social media.
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Choosing your social media platform
The first decision to make when developing a social media strategy is what platforms to focus on, with so many to choose from it could be tempting to try and utilise them all for wider audience reach. However, a targeted approach to the most relevant platforms will lead to the greatest social media ROI. Arguably, the most relevant social media sites to utilise as a scientific company are Linkedin and X (Formerly Twitter). As a platform targeted to professionals with advanced degrees, LinkedIn offers the potential to communicate with your target audience directly. Likewise, X is utilised by many scientists for short-form updates and discussions on current, trending topics and can be used to compliment Linkedin posts in a shorter format. Whilst social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook are used for more personal purposes, it can still be worth considering investing in targeted advertising of potential customers on these sites.
Tailor your content
Posting content that is tailored to your target customers is crucial to ensuring meaningful audience engagement with your posts and that content depends entirely on who your customers are. If your company provides a laboratory consumable or service where the end users are technicians, PhD students and researchers your content should be tailored to them. Informative and educational blog posts such as tips and tricks, applications of your product, relevant literature and case studies are all ways to generate meaningful engagement with these end users. When the end user of your product is senior management and Principal Investigators such as in the case of large, expensive devices with niche applications more technical posts on social media, with a focus on the benefits of your product such as time- and cost efficiency would be more likely to generate engagement.
Reflect your branding
When tailoring the content to your customers, don’t forget that the contact is a reflection of your company and so should reflect your company’s themes and values. Ensure that your content is presented in a way that fits with your company’s wider branding schemes to create cohesion across all your platforms from social media to printed materials. These details ensure that your social media strategy is part of your wider marketing campaign and is building towards your recognisable brand.
Posting frequency
A challenge when developing a social media strategy is posting the right amount of content at the right times. Post too sporadically and you will find engagement with posts goes down; post too regularly and customers are likely to mute your posts! Consider implementing a calendar that outlines the content you will post and when so you can have everything prepared in advance. Using a content calendar means that you can line your posts up with key events. For example, if Cancer Research is a key application of your technology – you may want to align social media content with Cancer Research Awareness Month for optimal engagement.
Don’t forget to participate in any engagement your post receives, social media is not passive and communication with your customers will lead to increased engagement.
Engage with a marketing consultant
Developing a social media strategy can quickly become a time-consuming process requiring employees to sacrifice valuable time. It requires employees to understand how each social media platform works, create a strategy, generate graphics and post on a regular basis. A marketing consultant can help you to ensure maximum customer engagement online.
At Minnac, our marketing consultants have extensive scientific expertise in life sciences research and industry, allowing us to develop your social media strategy with a crucial understanding of your product/service, your customers, and your applications. Marketing consultants can be a time and cost effective way of ensuring you generate meaningful social media engagement with your customers.
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