You’ve set up your social media pages, added fun cover and profile photos and received several new likes; that’s excellent! However, are you getting little engagement on your sites, or at least a significant amount below that of your competitors, who have incredible engagement on their social media accounts? What’s going on? Why isn’t anyone participating with you on social media? Here are 15 remarkable secrets that can help you boost your social media engagement through some very simple methods.
1. Uploading Pictures Is Vital. Believe it or not, pictures are the lifeblood of social media. For a time, people enjoyed reading status updates and such, but now with things such as Instagram, more and more people want to see a picture post or two throughout their day. One guess as to why this is the case is simply that people no longer have time to read through the hundreds to thousands of status updates on their newsfeeds. However, if they see a photo, they will look, like, and share pretty quickly. Just how important is a picture post? Well, according to Forbes, researchers have discovered an 85% increase to Facebook interaction and a 35% retweet increase. Moral of the story: start sharing those photos!
2. Create Your Very Own Shareable Image. “But what type of photo should I share?” If you don’t have any photographs to share from your business, craft your own shareable image. You can do this by adding quotes to photographs, whether your own or stock images. In addition, you can also create just a simple quote box with a solid color background like this image we made—it took just 10 minutes to whip up!
When you create an image, make sure to play around with your hashtags a bit to see what’s out there to add your quote to an adequate tag. You can do this for both Twitter and Google+. Always brand your image—add your Twitter handle, and the topical hash-tag.
3. Know How Often To Post. The main question everyone asks regarding social media is when the best time to post is? The best times vary from social network to social network, but you shouldn’t stop there. You should also start wondering just how frequently you should be posting to social media. This varies on who your followers are and what they want to say, but Buffer does point out it is a great idea to find the fine line between being informative and being a nuisance. The best way to find this out is to play around with it, ask your followers, and pay attention to your analytics.
4. Have Collaboration Boards On Pinterest. Wait, do you really want to allow your clients to add pins to a board? Is that safe? It is actually! According to Social Media Examiner, all you will have to do is follow one of their boards, invite them to be a collaborator on one of your boards, and they have the ability to pin. This can be exciting for everyone involved and really promote a great sense of community and involvement. If you find that you want or need to delete a collaborator and his or her pins, you can easily do this.
5. Have A Funny Bone? Use It! We all have a funny side, whether it is sarcastic or dorky, you and I both have a funny side. Do you know what you should do with that funny side? Use it for your social media campaigns! Yes, I understand that you want to have a more professional aspect to your business, but sometimes humor can really add to a social media experience. A key thing to remember when utilizing humor is that you should always make sure that you don’t offend your audience and that you research just what makes them laugh. Take a look at how Old Spice uses humor on their Facebook account:
6. Keep Twitter Posts Short And Sweet. According to Jerry Low over at The Daily Egg, it is a good idea to keep yourTwitter posts short and to the point. He suggests between 80 and 110 characters. He says that this gives your followers the ability to re-tweet you and add their own take without editing your post down any. Try this out for a few of your tweets; in fact, avoid sharing links in some of your posts as this can take up more characters than you realize!
7. Use A Conversational Tone On Social Media. As I mentioned earlier, it is a great idea to add humor to your posts, and this is easier if you adopt a conversational tone. This is possible whether you are an easygoing, laid back company or if you need to keep things more professional. Just think of when you go to a company-wide event; do you go around talking like you are writing for an academic journal? Of course not! Yet you still manage to be professional. This is the type of voice to take when you use social media. You might find that the more conversational you sound, the more likely you are to have great engagement on your posts.
8. Ask For A Retweet And You Shall Receive. It might seem like begging, but asking for a retweet can oftentimes, well, get you a retweet! It is exciting when that happens, and you’ll find that more people are willing to do this if you ask them. You can always add an incentive such as a retweet being a giveaway entry, but many times people will retweet you without an incentive. That’s one of the many beauties of Twitter.
9. Poll Your Audience. According to Social Media Examiner, a great way to increase engagement on your social media sites is to poll your audience. This doesn’t mean to poll them with what they’d like to see on social media, though that can work, too! You can poll your followers with things such as what their favorite Saturday activity is, which book is their favorite to read on a rainy day, or which Spice Girl is truly the best. This will have people jumping on quickly to give their opinion, and can open up fun dialogue between you and your clients. This is, in fact, what the creators of the new Bioware game, Dragon Age: Inquisition are doing until the release of the game:
10. “Caption This” And “Fill In The Blank” Are Perfect. In the Social Media Examiner article mentioned above, it also says that having your audience caption a photo or fill in the blank will also help improve engagement. Fill in the blank questions are fun, especially since it can often remind someone of Mad Libs. I don’t know about you, but I sure enjoyed those as a kid and still do! Chances are, your audience still enjoys those as well.
11. Make Your Social Media Sites Sound Like A Person Is Running It. This goes in connection with having a conversational tone; make your social sites sound like a person is running it. You don’t want it to sound like some cold robot is running it. If so, you are less likely to have any engagement. Sound like a human, have fun, and be silly with your posts. You can still maintain a manner of professionalism while being fun and engaging. Consider not sacrificing engagement to sound more professional.
12. Always Respond To Customer Comments And Posts. In an infographic from Media Bistro, it says that a great way to promote and improve engagement is for you to comment and respond to people. This goes in connection with point 11, and shows people that someone is actually there listening to what they have to say. You’ll find people are more apt to comment if they see that you are more apt to respond to them.
13. Connect With Those In Your Field And Boost Each Other. You can also improve engagement if you partner with those in your field. This might seem counterproductive because they might just be a competitor, but you might find that both of you see great success if you start working together. If you’d rather not go with a competitor, find someone that provides services that complement your services or products to form a partnership. This can encourage people to engage with you because many people do enjoy seeing others working together.
14. Stay Consistent With Your Social Posts. In the same infographic from Media Bistro, it says that you need to stay consistent with your social posts. This means that you need to find the voice you want to use, and stick to it. People will notice if the voice changes, and this can often turn people off of your social posts. Staying consistent helps people believe only one person is operating the site, which encourages them to engage more if they think only one person is updating and responding.
15. Utilize Great Social Media Sites Like Hootsuite. When it comes to managing all of the social sites, you will find utilizing something such as Hootsuite will help tremendously. This will make sure you can see whenever someone comments or responds to your posts on several sites, giving you a central location from which to comment. This will help you engage more with your clients, therefore helping them engage more with you.
Until Next Time
I hope you’ve found these secrets to be helpful to you and your social media campaigns! You’ll find that even implementing a few of these will help keep you from stressing out too much over engagement, and soon you’ll start seeing an increase in client interaction!
