This post is contributed by Jennifer Thomas.

Promotional products provide something tangible by which the company can actually reach out to its customers. In today’s virtual world, they’ve become a lifeline for creating much-needed buzz on social media. By marrying the appeal of branded items with the reach of social media, businesses can build their online presence by encouraging customer interaction and fostering loyalty. Here’s how you effectively use promotional products in order to drive engagement across all the social media platforms.

Run a Social Media Giveaway

Arguably, one of the easiest ways to deploy promotional products in social media marketing is to run a giveaway. Contests and giveaways drive excitement and engagement; people love the possibility of winning something for free. Start off with choosing something popular, high quality that you will give away, such as a branded hoodie, insulated water bottle, or tech accessory.

Think about implementing some kind of campaign where people can post pictures wearing your branded attire with a specific hashtag. The tactic helps not only to encourage user-generated content but also to provide a community feeling among followers who seem to be part of the culture of your brand. Corporate clothing has lasting effects on social media in that it cements brand identity and draws engagement in that it allows followers to feel part of the large brand family.

Encourage User-Generated Content with Branded Hashtags

User-generated content is still considered by many to be one of the best ways to build brand authenticity and drive social media engagement. A photo or video contest can motivate followers to create content that features your promotional products. For example, if you’re giving away branded T-shirts or travel mugs, call for customers to send in a photo of them enjoying their branded product with a specific branded hashtag. This will drive organic interaction with your products and allow word-of-mouth marketing to spread organically.

Having a unique hashtag for promotions makes it much easier to track entries and all engagement metrics on a single platform alone. You can even re-share UGC on your official page-appreciation of love coming from your audience, while you continue to build more content for your brand.

Influencer Collaborations with Promotional Products

Influencer partnerships are other potentially good ways to spread your products and communicate with an even wider audience. You basically send out promotional products to the influencers that represent your brand values, and in turn, they review and share your stuff on their pages. High engagement could, hence, be experienced, since the following of influencers seems to be loyal and attach importance to their judgment.

Also, confirm from the influencers that the posts include a branded hashtag or tagging of the account. Influencers can give away products or go live in sessions with your products; it opens avenues for interactive engagement with followers of the page. In this manner, such collaborations tend to increase the reach of your brand and may gain you some new followers-especially if that influencer has a very loyal and active community.

Unboxing and Product-Reveal Videos

Unboxing videos are highly popular on social media, and showing viewers what’s inside the opening of a package really rivets their attention. You can make your unboxing videos using promotional products or, of course, may send them to customers and influencers to make videos themselves. Thus, presenting your branded items in nice packaging and showing contents with the help of video stirs up interest and engagement.

Create unboxing videos for seasonal promo boxes, limited editions, or bundles. Share one video across several platforms with captions, stories, and hashtags. These unboxing videos are stellar teasers for upcoming promotions, and they will easily find a place in your social media calendar.

Reward Engagement with Exclusive Promotional Products

This can be a source of gratitude and engagement if one treats one’s followers in social media with promotional products which are very exclusive and limited in nature. You could also create an item available only to your loyal followers: those who consistently like and comment on your posts, refer friends to your page, or other forms of engagements. Give these followers an exclusive item, such as a custom T-shirt or collectible, in very limited availability to add to its appeal.

You can also play into that feeling of exclusivity by asking followers to comment on a certain post, share your content, or use a unique hashtag in order to become eligible. This way, you are rewarding their engagement and ensuring brand loyalty, with more likelihood of future engagements on social media platforms.

Create “Social-Only” Promotional Offers

Another excellent way to boost social media engagement is by offering unique “social-only” promotional items or discounts. Flash your unique discount codes, flash sales, or limited-time offers on branded items available only to followers of your pages on social media. People will follow the pages in order to keep up with such promotions and catch more of them.

For example, if someone wants to launch a new range of promotional products, they can provide special deals on Instagram and Facebook Stories to generate urgency. This will surely make the viewer take instant action and drive engagement and conversions.

Conclusion

But if it is done rightly, then promotional products may be one of the finest mediums to help one improve their social media engagement. From running giveaways, encouraging user-generated content, and even teaming up with influencers, all the way to providing offers that can only be redeemed by followers and fans, all of these methods are sure to build excitement and community around one’s brand. Adding a physical product to digital methods of engagement will serve to bring up social media presence and customer loyalty.