Promoting your brand through social media is pivotal for building a relationship with your customers. But ‘Likes’ or ‘Followers’ are one thing. Engagement is what really matters and determines how your brand is perceived in the eyes of your customers. Increasing engagement and interaction levels are, therefore, key for a successful social media campaign.
How do you go about doing that?
We have some smart but simple to implement tips to increase social media engagement and grow your business. Before that, we have to discuss measuring that success…
IMPORTANT – Measuring Engagement Metrics
Firstly, to truly maximize your user engagement, you have to have the analytic tools that can help monitor the levels of engagement on your social media platforms. You’ll be able to obtain rich insights into specific data (such as the number of views to the link clicks and user interactions) that is perfect for making changes to your campaign.
You’ll be able to achieve this by investing in the following tools:
- Google Analytics
- Facebook & Twitter Analytics
- Hootsuite
Each of these platforms will provide you with something different about data, so you’ll be able to truly maximize your customer engagement.
Now, let’s talk about the best tips to increase your customer engagement on social media:
Make Your Posts Visually Engaging
Big, colourful, blissful, powerful images or videos, coupled with engaging, witty and concise content with emojis, works all the time. It’s the great trick to catch the eye of your audience and turn them into loyal followers.
Creating super visual and engaging social media posts is your first step towards increasing your engagement. Without that foundation to build on, you won’t be able to hook in your audience in the first place. You can also include polls, surveys, contests and giveaways within your posts.
By including an image, GIF or short video into your social posts, you can make it attractive to all types of audiences while opening up your internet reach.
Talk About Your Topic Or Industry (Not Your Brand)
There is a difference between advertising and content. Make your social media posts too “brand-y” and you lose your audience. People jump on social media to be entertained and communicate their thoughts and feelings; they don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements about your business.
So how to go around that little bump?
Start creating content about your industry and your fields of interest. If you run a BBQ restaurant, talk about the latest BBQ cooking tips or suggestions. Create content about the best flavours and tips. All these ideas and pieces of content will pull in a larger audience and increase engagement to your page because you’re offering advice and quality content.
You’ll become known for valuable information, and therefore, over time, you can slowly seep through branded content, which won’t annoy your audience.
Share Other People’s Content
How to connect to more people? By sharing their content through your page. You won’t be taking the credit for the content, sure, but you’ll be developing a stronger connection with your audience. They’ll appreciate the sharing, as you’ll be building a broader base for their page or profile at the same time.
Significantly, it will keep your content diverse and relevant. As it comes from different contributors, it will increase the exposure of your social media presence, building up a reliable reputation. It will also keep your audience hooked on your page. That, in turn, leads to higher rates of engagement.
Share Blog Posts
Blogs, or online articles, are valuable commodities to have for your social media campaign. Not only are blogs a powerful tool for your SEO (just ask GrowME Marketing about how useful it can be for your business), but it can be a driver of engagement from your customers.
Blogs are informative pieces that provide an in-depth chance to explain topics, give advice or offer another opinion. And that drives interest in audiences. They want to be informed, challenged or helped – and your blog posts can do that for them. It can be blogs from your website or guest blogs that you post on others (like we’re doing for this one!).
Significantly, it creates interactions. People will respond to the topic, create a debate on your page, and even share the post. That leads to more engagement and better awareness of your brand. It is the perfect way to give our customers more details about your company and what you can offer them in a detailed, useful blog post.
Interact With Your Customers
This goes without saying, but it still has to be said: you must interact with your customers when they interact with you. Giving direct responses to your customers will really make them feel part of the brand and the conversation.
A few tips to make this work in your favour:
- Greet the customer by their name. It adds a human touch to your approach.
- Try to be open, friendly and funny when you respond, particularly if it is a funny or joyful social media post.
- If it’s a real, important question, be direct and honest. It helps build a strong relationship with the customer.
- Acknowledge the customers’ feelings. Doing so will ensure that you understand their needs, concerns, or joys. It makes you feel like their friend.
- Use hashtags when the moment calls for it. It helps each customer feel like the business values them while also spreading the word about your brand.
- The same applies to emojis. Use them wisely and smartly. It adds some colour to your brand and helps create strong bonds.
- Stir the pot and create a conversation that involves more people. Doing this will open up your engagement reach to a broader audience.
Post Frequently & At The Right Times
A quick little point here: make sure that you post consistently and at the right times. You’re never going to build traction to your page if you don’t post on it regularly.
You should be looking for daily Facebook and Instagram posts, multiple Tweets a day and semi-daily Linkedin posts.
Doing so means that your audience can always expect you to provide engaging content that motivates them while keeping them updated and in-the-know about the industry and your business.
