Social media is becoming more important in the world of marketing as it can help businesses to grow their brand. If used correctly, it can have a positive domino effect on many aspects of the business, such as increasing brand awareness and improving profits.
Social media is vital for businesses to promote their brand, but content on these channels doesn’t guarantee sales. The key to successful social media use is engagement. Follow these top tips to increase social media engagement and achieve business growth.
1. Talk About Your Topic (Not Just Your Brand)
Joining just any group won’t be effective. It would be like if a beauty salon tried to join a forum about electrics – it’s not going to reach the right people. Joining groups that are relevant to your business will help you increase your chances of reaching your target audience and getting your name known by potential customers.
Creating your own forums on social media platforms is a great way to spread your brand. By inviting key influencers and prospective customers to join in the discussion, you can reach a wider audience.
Do not only promote your own brand as this will give a bad impression. It is better to have different group members discuss the latest trends in the industry as this will make customers see you as more useful. Do not be the egotistical brand that focuses only on itself, but rather talk about the topic at hand as well.
2. Join Question & Answer Sessions
Sites like Quora present an opportunity for brands to answer customer queries and establish themselves as helpful and knowledgeable. If you can provide relevant answers to questions and start discussions with potential customers, you will be seen as the go-to source for information, before your competitors have a chance to chime in.
More and more consumers are expecting answers to their queries immediately, so having a dedicated customer response team is the perfect way to meet those needs.
The best way to beat your competitors is to be the first to answer customer queries. However, if the information you provide is inaccurate or obviously published in a hurry, you could damage your reputation. We advise taking the time to do ongoing research into the most commonly asked questions in your area, so you can have sample answers ready to go that can easily be personalized for each customer.
3. Share Other People’s Content
Your customers will see that you are there to provide them with relevant information, whether it comes from yourself or not. If your social media feed can give them what they need, they will be more likely to follow you.
If you want to keep your customers engaged, mix up your content and have different people contribute. It can get boring hearing the same person talk about the same things all the time. So encourage others to share their thoughts and ideas.
Reposting Customer or Follower Posts
If you make the customer feel good about their content being featured on your business account, they will be more likely to share it with their followers or screenshot it for later.
This means that by sharing positive posts about your brand or goods and services, you can increase customer engagement.
Coca-Cola posts messages promoting the use of the product and those that use the hashtag ‘#ShareACoke’.
Using Influencers to Share Content
Use your relationships with bloggers and social media influencers to get your content shared.
If you want your brand to be seen by prospective customers, it’s a good idea to ask well-known individuals in your field to promote your posts in exchange for a discount or freebie. This way, the influencer feels like they are getting something of value from collaborating with you, and it’s a win-win situation for both of you!
Walkers is sharing TV personality and influencer Paddy McGuinness’s content on the best flavors to pair together for the best crisp sandwiches.
Guest Posting
Writing articles that are posted on other people’s blogs and news websites is a great way to get more social media engagement. You can promote these articles across social media, which will direct people to your website or the website of the person who posted your article.
This is the perfect opportunity to give customers more details about your company and what you can offer them in a useful blog post. You can also use this opportunity to improve your SEO by creating backlinks to your website.
4. Showcase your fans and employees
People crave attention and when you make them the focus of attention on your social media profiles, they’re more likely to engage with your brand. You can do this for both your fans and employees.
Share photos that fans post when they tag or check-in to your page. Share your employees’ achievements and post fun images of them on the job. They will be more likely to repost or share them with their own friends and followers.
7. Use hashtags
Here we discuss the benefits of using hashtags on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hashtags can make your content more searchable and accessible to people who are interested in the topic, even if they don’t follow you. Studies have shown that tweets with hashtags tend to get twice the engagement of tweets without them, and are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted.
According to Antonio Calero, it is best to use hashtags in moderation on all social networks, except Instagram (where more is better). This is because engagement drops on Twitter if you use more than two hashtags.
8. Follow the 80-20 rule
If you only ever talk about your products and your company online, people will get tired of it pretty quickly. You need to show them that you’re a source of interesting and useful information about your industry.
If you want your company’s social media presence to be successful, it’s a good idea to share a mix of third-party content (80%) and promotional content about your company (20%).
For every four posts from other sources, you should share one of your own promotional posts. This will help you avoid seeming like a self-promotional jerk, and keep your audience’s attention so they won’t mind your promotions.
9. Include a CTA
A CTA is a brief message that tells your audience what you want them to do. But even if you’re just posting regular content, you can increase your engagement by asking your readers to respond using any one of the following CTAs below:
- Read more
- Click here
- Subscribe now
- Please RT
- Please share
- Leave a comment
- Post a caption
- Buy now
10. Organise an event
Hosting an event is a great way to increase social media engagement. Events can be online, like a Tweetchat, or webinar, or offline, like a conference or retreat.
Post about the results of the event on Twitter or another social media platform. Mention how many people attended and what conversation took place. If you attended a conference or a retreat, post photos of the event afterwards.
People love it when they are featured in photos from events they attended. If you feature other attendees in your photos, they will most likely tag themselves and share the photos with their own network.
11. Showcase customer reviews & testimonials
Anytime you get a good customer review or testimonial, make sure to show it off on your page or profile. Having testimonials visible will help build social proof and credibility for your company. Plus, it lets your customers know that their feedback is important to you. Posting testimonials often encourages other customers to share their experiences with your brand.
12. Run Contests and Giveaways
One way to increase engagement with your brand on social media is by offering rewards for customers who tweet with a specific hashtag, retweet or share your content, or become a follower. This is a great way to show appreciation for customers who take part in promoting your brand.
People are attracted to brands that offer something in return, such as discounts, freebies, or cheaper membership. Running a contest that gets users engaging with your brand is a great way to attract more customers and raise brand awareness.
When trying to generate a winner for your contest, it is important to make it as fair as possible. A great way to do this is to use a random selection tool, which will give all of your users an equal chance of being chosen for the prize.
13. Keep your posts to the optimal length
An analysis of social media posts has revealed that posts of a certain length are more likely to be liked, shared, and retweeted. The following data is from a useful infographic from BufferSocial. The infographic provides information on the optimal post length for every social network, including YouTube.
The optimal length for content on social media networks is as follows:
- Tweets: 71 – 100 characters
- Facebook Posts: 40 characters
- LinkedIn Posts: 25 words
- Hashtag: 6 characters
- Title Tags: 55 characters
- Blogs: 1600 words
14. Be consistent
It’s more important to be consistent than to blog or post on social media frequently.
If you post fewer times, your followers will see you as less reliable and consistent, and your engagement will drop.
You should post on a consistent basis, even if it’s just once a day. Tools like Hootsuite or Buffer can help you stay on track and continue posting even when you’re on vacation.
15. Post less often
This study from Hubspot found that the average number of interactions per post increases as the average number of posts published per week decreases.
Reduce social media posts to 2-3 per day to increase engagement.
16. Respond to negative feedback
Even if you don’t use social media to engage with customers, some of them will still be talking about your brand and products. complaints and bad reviews.
A quick and sensitive response to negative publicity can defuse a situation that could potentially harm your online reputation. SalesForce Marketing Cloud recommends the following tips to respond to negative comments:
- Respond quickly
- Don’t delete
- Don’t feed the trolls
17. Build a mailing list
A mailing list of subscribers is a list of people who have chosen to receive updates from your company. These are people who, if you take care of them, can keep coming back to your blog and become some of your most enthusiastic supporters and promoters.
Build your list, and then you can email them every time you create a new social media profile or page, asking them to follow you.
18. Use WordPress’ social plugins
WordPress has a number of amazing plugins that can help you increase your social media engagement. Some of them are:
- Click To Tweet – Increase Twitter sharing with short tweetable snippets
- Facebook Like Box Widget – Boost your Facebook likes and followers
- SumoMe – Awesome social sharing plugin with multiple functions
- Official Twitter Plugin – Embed Twitter content and grow your audience
- LinkedIn Master – Integrate your personal or company Linkedin page
19. Provide exceptional social customer service
It is no longer acceptable to not respond to a customer’s queries, complaints, or comments on your social media channels. Social media has changed the rules of customer engagement and customers now expect a response within a few hours.
If you want to keep your engagement rates high, you should hire a customer service executive who is dedicated to your social media channels.
20. Hire a social media manager
You should outsource your social media marketing if you don’t have time to implement the tips in this article. Give your social media manager the PDF of this article to get started.
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