Is one of your goals for 2019 to grow your social media following?
Contrary to belief, it isn’t a case of just following people in the hope that they may follow you back. You have to work hard at using your socials, but it’s all fun – I promise!
If you are regularly posting on your socials, but not taking the time to interact and engage with your current and potential followers, then you are missing opportunities to increase your social media engagement. When you interact regularly with those who you follow, you are building a relationship that can drive conversions to your website and ultimately sales.
One of the most powerful tools you can use to help you increase social media engagement is to incorporate visual content. One study suggested that images led to an 85% interaction rate on Facebook.
Good quality images and videos increase the chances that people will interact with your social media posts. Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat have flourished on the power of visual storytelling. Tools like Canva can help you to create unique visuals that will help to engage your social media audience.
Your business has a variety of ways to increase social media engagement through visual content. Images of customers using and enjoying your products always provides good, shareable content that can be used on your socials.
If it is appropriate for your business, incorporate personality into your social media posts. It can be hard to break through the social media noise to get people’s attention, therefore posting a variety of content will help keep your audience engaged. Users who follow your brand are likely to scroll right past stories that are overly promotional in nature.
Want to get your followers talking? Ask them to share their opinions with you. Can you run a Poll on Instagram Stories, Facebook and Twitter? Are you launching a new service? Or preparing a new dish for your restaurant? Can you add a teaser image and ask for your audiences thoughts on it? By asking questions, you are gaining a much more clear idea of what your customer wants and it drives conversation for your business.
Most people are very happy to talk about what they like and don’t like. Can you ask your audience to leave a review? Whether it’s TripAdvisor or Facebook Reviews, it is valuable information for those who have not yet decided whether or not they wish to use your product or service and can sway a decision.
You may think they are, but social media users aren’t online all the time. So if you happen to post something while most of your followers are inactive, you could potentially lose out on engagement opportunities.
To increase social media engagement, find out when your followers are most likely to be online and then schedule your posts accordingly. The goal is to post at the correct time to ensure maximum engagement through sharing, likes and comments.
The best times to post can differ according to many factors, such as time zone and target demographic.
But it can also differ according to the social media channels you’re using. So you might have to run a few tests to see which timing works best for you on different platforms. According to Hootsuite, Facebook posts tend to drive the most engagement between 1PM and 4PM on the weekends. As for tweets, your best bet to increase engagement on Twitter is to post them around 12-3PM during the work week. On the other hand, Instagram users are engaged throughout the week with the most active hours being 8-9AM. Based on how you use them, hashtags can dramatically increase social media engagement. While your posts may already reach your existing followers, hashtags help you engage people who aren’t already following you. When you use relevant and trending hashtags in your Twitter and Instagram posts, you improve the chances of users finding your content.
With the introduction of Instagram Live and Facebook Live, you have new options to increase social media engagement. You can make the most of these options to engage fans on a real-time basis.
Try live streaming your launch event, a milestone celebration, or an event. You could even live stream the creation and brainstorming process of your upcoming product launch to build hype. The options are endless..
To discuss your social media, contact April - april@playthefieldnorthumberland.co.uk
