How to Increase Social Engagement

Go Viral

Social media can be an enigma sometimes. You see other companies doing social engagement well, pulling in likes and shares all over the place. But when you look at your own feed all you see are a couple of tumbleweeds rolling by. How do you turn yourself from social pariah to social influencer?

Take a Picture It Lasts Longer

Adding a photo or video to content that you share drastically increases interaction. That said, you can’t just post any old image on your twitter feed. You need to find something that illustrates what you’re trying to say and fits your brand. But it’s fairly simple, posts with images in them get more clicks than text only posts.

Start a Conversation

This is potentially the hardest of the points we’re going to mention today, but it will be far be the most rewarding. If you can start a conversation with your customers, rivals or influencers you will get a lot of social exposure. Being able to start, or join, conversations in your industry is good on so many levels. You will be able to enhance your reputation, learn and help to foster a real community. However, it isn’t easy. Start by focusing on an area where you are a real subject expert and joining existing conversations with other experts. Then, once you’re better known, start tagging them in comments you make, and grow from there.

Smile For Me

Another way to get more interactions that might sound a little cute to the older generation of marketers is using emoticons. Adding smiling faces or thumbs ups to your posts might seem a bit childish but they do help convey a more human tone. Obviously there’s a time and a place for emojis, but you should consider sprinkling a few on your posts when you think it’s appropriate.

Say Thanks and Well Done

If you’re using product or work with another company and things go well, tell the world about it. We like to talk about products we use that we think are good. Firstly it tells the company that we like what they’re doing but it also spreads a bit of positivity around. And we could all do with a bit more positivity online at the moment.

Track Your Mentions

When you get tagged in a post you’ll usually get some kind of notification, but you should also be tracking times when your company is mentioned and you haven’t been tagged. These conversations could be very valuable to you, and if you’re not noticing them you’ll never know what’s said. There are a number of tools like Hootsuite that will help you track mentions, or you could just do it the old fashioned way by searching for your name.

Keep things on the Regular

Post at a steady, maintainable, pace. This is probably the key to both SEO and social media. If you’re posting regularly your followers will know when to look out for your content. You’ll also avoid flooding people with content and seeing your followers drop, which often happens with accounts that don’t post at a steady pace.

Social Engagement

If you’re following these six steps your social engagement should begin to grow slowly. Remember that these things take time, and growing a social media accounts following, if it’s going to be valuable, is hard work. You’ll need to create and curate great content, pick the right times to share it and much more if you want to make social media a success for your company.

Photo credit – Top: Joe the Goat Farmer
Photo credit – Bottom: Pixabay