How to move from just broadcasting content on social media, to a customer engagement strategy

Welcome to the PRmoment Podcast.This week we’re chatting to Bradley Tooth, head of social media at Democracy PR about how brands can move from broadcasting content on social media to engaging with their customers and potential customers through social media.For those vintage social media users amongst our listeners - Brad was one of the guys who got blisters on his hands when 02 attempted to reply to every customer's Tweet during the early days of its Surprise and Delight strategy.Since then Brad has done some super interesting work for Sage - which we’ll talk about later and now he works for Democracy PRThanks to our PRmoment Podcast sponsors, The PRCA.Here are a few of the highlights that Brad and PRmoment founder Ben Smtih discussed:2 mins How Brad believes so many brands are getting their social media strategy wrong by broadcasting too much content and not engaging with their audiences.“Of all The Premier League football club's Facebook posts last year, not one of them replied to a customer comment”3 mins Understanding on-feed and off-feed content on the social platforms4 mins What sort of content gets engagement?“Look at Manchester United on TikTok, they wax lyrical about the number of views their content has generated - views are great but TikTok’s basis and antithesis is that it is an engagement problem and they (Manchester United) don’t respond!... It’s madness - the way the platforms work is that when you respond to your customers and you’re a verified account, you get more views”6 mins How the social media channel algorithms reward engagement7 mins Can social media engagement be automated?“AI’s great for lots of stuff, but social networks are for people”9  mins How brands can manage and respond in an engaging way on social - by scaling up and scaling down.10 mins Where does a social media engagement strategy meet the customer services team?“Don’t try and close off conversations on social…Why would you want to stop your customers from communicating with you!?”14 mins Is the trick to get lots of engagement as a brand - to be funny? And lots of brands don’t want to be funny?“Engagement doesn’t have to be funny, it has to be authentic…tailor yourself to the room”16 mins How are brands scaling up and down their social media teams?“Comms people are best placed to deliver interactions (on social)”“Social never sleeps and it never stops - sign up to the platform notification updates to see how quickly things change”18 mins What is the skill set of a good social media community manager?20 min Good engagement requires specific content across different channels, Brad talks us through what that looks like across the channels.22 mins What are the best tools to help brands manage their communities across the different social media channels?“The platforms want you to interact on their platforms”26 mins Brad discusses the need for brands to adapt their social media strategies according to the platform’s algorithm.28 mins Brad talks us through “The Sage Boss it 2021” campaign,