In a society that lives and breathes social media every day, establishing an online presence for your business is essential to reaching your target customers.
If done correctly, social media can boost your brand awareness and quickly increase sales and conversions. 81% of small and medium-sized businesses are using social media today as they recognise its importance. If you are unsure where to start, here is our definitive guide to social media engagement and the ways to increase it for your brand.
What is social media engagement?
Social media engagement is a broad umbrella term that covers a range of metrics that can be used to measure how many people engage with your brand on different social media platforms. On a surface level, this can include the comments, likes and shares of your posts. Other forms of engagement can be measured by:
- Followers and audience growth.
- Click-throughs (to your website, for example).
- Mentions (both tagged and untagged).
- Using branded hashtags.
The more engaged your audience is, the more that other people will see your content and the more conversions will result from your online activity.
8 ways to increase your social media engagement
Establish an effective strategy
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media, which is why it is key to first establish your strategy based on your business and what your goals are. What you want to achieve from social media will greatly effect the type of content you want to put out.
Know your audience
It will be very difficult to engage your audience when you don’t know who they are. Establishing who your target audience and customers are will allow you to better appeal to them. The type of language, tone, and visual content will depend on their age, gender, and interests. It will allow you to know which social media platforms you need to be on and when is best to publish your content.
Create valuable content
The content that you post must be original and interesting to your audience. It’s best to think of this as a conversation, as content that just broadcasts how great your brand and product/service is, will not get people talking and engaging. While effective images are great, video content has the potential to be very engaging to your audience. You can also utilise user generated content, which will further encourage people to post about you.
Stay topical
Keeping up with topical, trending events and conversations will ensure your content is up-to-date and relevant to what is happening in the present day. This could include trending pop culture discussions, holidays, sporting events, and memes.
Show a personal and human side
Don’t shy away from showing the personal and human side of your company. This will better appeal to customers, who will be able to establish a connection and relationship with your brand. Many companies encourage their staff members to sign off from their social media posts to remind audiences there is a human behind the hashtags.
Timing is everything
Your audience will not be online all the time, so publishing content at the right time is essential to improving the likelihood of them engaging. The best time to post isn’t easy to establish, and will depend on a variety of factors such as timezone and demographic. We recommend an A/B testing approach, posting at different times to discover which results in the most engagement and reach.
Give back with competitions
Another brilliant way to increase engagement is by hosting giveaways and other competitions for your customers to be in with a chance of winning something. It compels people to follow and engage, and depending on how you approach it, could lead to more user-generated content and a rapid increase of brand awareness.
Collaborate with influencers
Social media influencers and micro-influencers have grown their following because of their ability to successfully increase engagement and captivate audiences. By collaborating with people that have the same audience as your brand, you can increase your reach to target and appeal to them.
Social media marketing company topclick have the necessary expertise to help you grow steadily across a wide range of social media platforms, utilising the enormous reach available to target the customers you want to engage. Get in touch with us today for more information.