Social media engagement is a measure of how individuals interact with your content and accounts on all social media sites. Social media sites monitor engagement through various means, such as likes, comments, and reactions to posts. Social media engagement can be vital for companies as it can enhance the effectiveness of advertising and brand awareness.
The likelihood of making your product and service known to them rises as more people become familiar with your updates. Social media can be used to make contact with your prospects and customers on an individual, personal basis.
Not all engagement is created equal. You might think that posting cat videos on social media every day will boost your engagement, but it won’t do much for your business unless you run a pet shop or animal clinic. Worse, seeking engagement at any cost may damage your brand. You need to engage those who could become customers (or already are) and have an interest in your service or product.
How do you make sure the people you would like to interact with your social media posts? Let’s have a look at some tips.
How to Boost Social Media Engagement in 12 Simple Steps
The following are some of the ways you can boost your social media engagement.
1. Make Sure You Have a Plan
It is important to have a plan for your social media before you begin anything. Determine the channels you will use to communicate with your followers and then determine the kind of messages that you will share on each.
In order to find the most suitable channel for your campaign, you will need to select the one that contains more active users who match your target population most closely. If you are a largely B2C company, you are most probably going to base your strategy around Twitter and Instagram. LinkedIn would also be the place that should not be left out by B2B companies, as there it is likely to find your customers. Add platforms that are relevant to your business and target audience. But don’t add so many that they take attention away from your most successful channels.
Think about how you would like your business to be thought of and develop the ideal personality. It is good to make a spreadsheet that will assist in tracking your campaigns.
2. Engaging Images or Videos in Your Posts
Image-based content is better on social media than plain-text posts. Use videos or photos strategically to achieve better results. You’ll also be interested in keeping the images posted relevant to your company or whatever you’re advertising. You may post pictures from past events or photos of the current location if you’re organizing an event. Utilize engaging images to exhibit how much you‘re looking forward to the event as you move closer to the date.
You can create graphics that contain short messages. These can be posted on your social media platforms. Make sure to post images and videos that are pertinent to your business or brand. It may be amusing to post a meme with a co-worker on Teams, but that meme likely does not have a place in your company’s social media posts.
3. Post Questions to Your Posts
Asking your followers a social media question is one good way to increase engagement. You might, for instance, ask your followers how they feel about something or whether they have any advice to give. These questions will encourage debate and discussion in social media. This not only enhances interaction but will also have your audience coming back to listen more from you.
This social media strategy also gets people to talk about your posts, even if they would otherwise not do so. They may participate in the conversation rather than simply scroll by to make their comments or express their views.
Asking for feedback is not sufficient. You must also be capable of responding to it in the proper manner. Do not become defensive when someone critiques your business.
Screen captures can help bad social media behaviour to persist even after an inept reply has been deleted. Treat others as if it were a personal conversation.
4. Create Contests, Giveaways, and Events Around Your Posts
Creating events around your content is another way to increase social media engagement. There are a number of ways to do this. For instance, you could run giveaways or contests for the number of individuals who like your post or comment on it.
You can also make an event to post an update. Announce it in advance via social media so that people are aware of the time. If you are hosting a webinar, for example, remind people of it multiple times before it begins. After the event, post a video of all the information shared.
5. Give a Call to Action..
You should include a call to action in all your social media posts to encourage your audience to convert. You could ask your followers to sign up for a newsletter, learn more about a service or product, redeem a coupon code, or do anything else.
6. But Don’t Be Too Promotional
While it is important to include a call to action, refrain from posting only sales pitches. This can negatively impact engagement. They’ve come to expect it when they see social media promotions, so if you only offer this, they will tune out and ignore all of your posts. Attempt to make blog entries or videos regarding topics relevant to your product. Think of how your products and services apply to news issues or simplify individuals‘ lives.
Keep in mind that customers don’t necessarily care about you or your business. Your clients care about what your services and products can do for them and the issues you can address. You don’t want your first sentence to talk about the technical details of a tent if you are selling outdoor gear. Instead, start with the benefits that the tent can bring. You can increase engagement on social media by providing valuable information rather than just pitching products.
7. Do More Than Post Links
It’s easy to ruin your social media engagement by posting a link with no context. Social networking platforms may not provide a preview page of the destination, leaving only a URL. Individuals will not click on a link if they have no idea what it‘s about or where it goes to. Even with a social channel giving a peek at the link, the watchers might view it as an ad and skip past it as they scroll for stuff that is cool or helpful to them.
Make a post that is lively and contains a link to your content. When your company makes a post with a link to an article on a blog, make sure that it contains a quote and end it with “Click here to Check It Out!” Users will still get useful information even when they do not click on the link.
8. Employ the Hashtags in a Strategic Manner
Hashtag following on social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram is an effective means of discovering related discussions. It is also a suitable tactic for growing social media activity. The proper use of hashtags will expose your content to individuals who would not have viewed it in any other case.
You must use hashtags strategically. Publishing a list of irrelevant hashtags to be seen in as many feeds as possible is not the most effective approach. Irrelevant hashtags are not only obnoxious and discourage people from participating in your posts, but they also fail to get you in front of the right people.
Make a spreadsheet for all the hashtags that you are going to use. Then, assign each update based on what it is. This will ensure that you’re postings are relevant for those who follow hashtags.
9. Be Human
Most companies fail to leverage social media because their updates are automated. They forget that individuals who follow companies on social media do so because they like what they do, and they would like to know what happens behind the scenes.
Companies can become more personable if they have authentic conversations with their customers and are expressive. This may involve some companies sharing funny pictures or videos of their employees so that they can present the culture of the workplace. Some businesses will want to express their commitment to the community by presenting their philanthropic efforts. It’s worth demonstrating that there are actual people behind your business and that you don’t have a soulless algorithm running your social media presence.
10. Be Consistent and Active
Simply being active on your social media channels is a relatively simple way to increase engagement. Engage in conversation with users, no matter their identity, by posting high-quality updates and responding to direct messages and mentions quickly. You must always be posting and responding to new posts. The more interaction you have, the more likely people are to return for more. This type of interaction is also a priority for many social media platforms. You can get your post viewed by many more people if you reply every now and then to the posts of those who engage with your account.
It can be challenging to create and maintain a routine if you have not planned your content ahead of time. Make a social calendar to track what you want to post (and when) on each channel. This will help you be consistent and strategic with your content.
11. Use a Social Media Management tool
It might be challenging to share individualized posts to every channel if you have more than one account. Posts can be programmed in social media management tools to post at the right times without your manual intervention on every account. The platforms make it easy to respond quickly to comments and monitor mentions so that you can maintain strong communication across channels.
Social media management platforms automate your online presence so you can focus on planning your content strategy. Instead of spending hours each day creating content, you could spend time developing and scheduling future postings that will increase engagement.
12. Do Not Be Afraid to Try New Things
It is always best for companies to experiment with new methods of marketing. Social media is a prime example of this since it‘s in a constant state of evolution with the ever-present tweaking that goes on by corporations. Post on several channels to see which ones generate the most interaction. Then, focus your efforts on this channel. Experiment with various formats, such as videos, images, and quotes from blog posts.
Don’t be afraid to try new concepts. Reevaluate your strategy often to determine where your resources are being focused. You may not get the same results today because you didn’t have much success with a certain social media platform a year earlier. If you are seeing a drop in interaction, figure out if the issue is a new platform or if your content isn’t reaching your target audience.
Conclusion
It ought to be easy enough to boost your social media activity with the correct strategy. Keep in mind that not every strategy is good for every business. You might need to test a few strategies to achieve your desired outcome.
Create content that is relevant to your customers and think of ways to personalize interactions. You may need to experiment for a while before you find the right combination of channels and content.
We at GenTech Marketing are ready to assist you if you need help developing a strategy for social media engagement that works.
