Generating social media engagement is imperative to the success of your digital marketing strategy. But achieving clicks, likes, conversation, shares, etc. is simply not as easy as it may seem. Social media engagement is your way of interacting with your consumers and discovering new things about their interests and pain points. This is a framework to building a strong relationship.
There are many great strategies you can use to try to get the most engagement possible. In this article, we’ve have shared 12 FREE ways to increase social media engagement.
1) Chat and engage with other Social Users
Twitter social chats are great for getting involved in Twitter communities. They create a common place for many people to share thoughts on common topics.
Chats are created around a hashtag (#) that generally describes the category of the chat. For instance, #SproutChat focuses on social media. Each week the focus of the chat is on a different aspect of social media marketing.
These chats allow you to show your knowledge as well as create conversations with others.
2) Explore Groups on LinkedIn
LinkedIn groups are communities within LinkedIn that act in similar ways to Twitter chats. Groups are built around common interests and present a chance for you to share your content for people to enjoy.
While being active in these groups, be sure to interact with others’ posts; don’t continuously post your content and fail to recognize the posts of others.
3) Consider evergreen content strategies
You put hours into making a great blog, you publish it, share it on social media, and then cross your fingers in hopes that you are going to get great engagement.
Is that the end of it?… No, you need to repurpose great content to help it live longer and give it the possibility to reach more people.
Evergreen Content stands the test of time and is always relevant to your audience. It is important to implement this into your strategy to get the most out of your marketing efforts.
Change up the wording of your posts each time you share the blog so that it reaches people in different ways.
4) Follow your viewer’s advice
Pay attention to what they are sharing day-to-day. Is your content aligning with this? Take notes of any changes that need to be made in order to make your content more appealing to your audience.
If not, you are just pumping out content that no one is interested in!
5) Emphasize eye catching images
Put yourself in the consumers’ position – scrolling through your various social media feeds being exposed to roughly 1500 pieces of content a day on Facebook alone! What catches your eye and forces you to click? Images are the answer here.
Create images that capture a reader throughout their scrolling and forces them to pause.
Tweets with images alone can get you up to 200% more engagement, so just imagine what merging multiple images into a Gif can do for that percentage! – Exciting isn’t it?
6) Pay attention to when your fans are active
Do some research on when the best time to post on social media is.
This research will be based off of your followers – see when they tend to be spending the most time on social media as well as when they tend to click on links.
There are great tools available such as Tweroid, Followerwonk, and SocialBro that can help you determine the optimal time to post.
In addition, tools such as HootSuite are available to help you schedule posts at these ideal times in advance
7) Be proactive and communicate
Ask questions, like posts, thank people for commenting/reposting, tagging people; these are all ways to initiate and encourage conversation via social media.
Monitor your inbox and notifications to see if people are enjoying your content or if they have any questions. Not only is it great customer service to do so, but it helps build lasting and trusting relationships with your followers.
As I mentioned earlier, Twitter Chats are great for encouraging conversations. People often reply to tweets with more points and questions.
Get involved in ways like these and get to know your audience!
8) Consider videos as a tool
Back to the scrolling through your news feed point – don’t you find yourself stopping most often when you see a video shared by a friend? Videos on Facebook alone take up 30% of your news feed.
The question is what types of videos should you be sharing to increase engagement? The answer to this question is quite complex. We wrote a comprehensive post on how to leverage video.
Videos are great for showing the personality of you company – did you have a karaoke night? Share a peek of it with your followers – it shows you are human too!
It is also great to show product videos as 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it. Experiment with it until you find what works best for your company.
9) Let your personality shine
Show your audience who they are working with. This can be done many different ways such as behind the scenes pictures, employee features on your pages, and how you brand your posts.
Consumers are more likely to engage when they are comfortable with, and know, who they are going to be dealing with. If you are a marketing agency, be fun – show them a picture of your ping pong or bowling lunch break!
People want to do business with people they will get along with!
10) Support and share others’ content
The old saying, “Give credit where credit is due” holds true when it comes to marketing and wanting to increase social media engagement.
When you read a great blog, share it and tag the author in it – maybe they will return the favor for you! Same goes when writing blog posts as well.
Include a link to another blog that may go into a deeper level about one piece of your blog. When analyzing performance, that author will look back and see that some traffic is coming from your blog.
They will then be more likely to share your work on their social media and in their blogs.
11) Be consistent
Once you find those ideal times to publish and post, be consistent at doing so at those times daily. This is where programs like Hootsuite work best. As your engagement increases and more people are seeing your content they will become used to receiving it at the same time each day. Use this to your advantage to build an audience!
12) Publish work on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is one of the most powerful professional networks and presents a great opportunity for your work.
LinkedIn has a publishing feature called “Publish a post” which allows you to write long-form posts that will be shared within your network. Once published, everyone in your network will be notified of your newest article drawing them in to take a look. In addition, these posts live on your profile in their own section, serving as a portfolio and easy place of access to refer people to.
There you have it, 12 of our favorite free ways to increase social media engagement. We hope that you enjoyed this article and that you are able to utilize these tips in your social media marketing strategy!
