Engaging Audience on Social Media

Social media is a crucial catalyst for brand growth for many businesses. So it is essential to get social savvy and learn ways of engaging your audience on social media networks. In this article, we will list 42 ways of engaging your audience on social media.

It is no longer news that organic reach and engagement on many social networks have plummeted in recent years. Social media is now a pay-to-play affair that seems to favour businesses with deep pockets—those who are ready to spend on social media advertising to boost their post’s reach, engagement and customer loyalty on several social media networks.

This situation has left many companies scrambling to find creative tactics and evergreen content to get their audience to like, share, click or comment on their social media posts.

Are you one of those struggling to create evergreen content to gain attention from your social media audience? Are you looking to get creative on social media? Then this article is for you. Read on to find ways for engaging your audience on social media.

Building an engaged audience on any social media network takes work. It is like a cocktail party where welcoming people and encouraging conversation between the host and the guests is mandatory. But it’s the key to maximising your opportunities. As social media platforms grow to reward evergreen content and authentic social interactions, social media engagement has become vital in any marketing strategy.

Before we list how to engage your audience on social media, let us answer a few common questions about the topic.

Table of Contents

What Is Engaging Content for Social Media?

Social media engagement means having the ability to attract an existing or potential customer and draw them in by being informative, educative, and entertaining with your content e.g. your blog post.

It means providing value to your audience through various social channels. Useful content created to engage prospective customers could include tools, blog posts, videos, infographics, downloadable guides, mini-courses, social media contests, etc. Also, by curating varied types of content from reputable sources, you optimise opportunities for your content to be shared.

Creating or curating a specific type of content for social media is not as simple as it sounds. From optimising your mix of formats to finding innovative ways to make your content more shareable, building a social media strategy centred on engagement requires a multi-faceted approach.

How Do You Get the Audience Attention on Social Media?

Your campaign’s success depends on grabbing the attention of your potential customers enough to see engagement in one form or another. But you must be smart with the way you go about it. Standing out on social media is straightforward, especially if you know your target audiences and how to capture their attention through relevant content or social activities.

We all know by now that if your social media engagement strategy or your content sucks, your social media presence will also suck! Yes, you can throw money at social media advertising, which will help you reach more people, but that doesn’t mean that the content you share will resonate with your audience.

Consider each element of your social strategy, social media posts, including your images, your use of brand colours and the description. How you introduce friendly conversation into the mix of your tweets, posts or user-generated content helps determine how many people will open up to you. Connecting with your audience on an emotional level, especially when it’s on a positive topic or theme, can affect your social media posts and improve customer loyalty and customer advocacy.

Many business owners, entrepreneurs, social media managers and social networks marketers want to know the best ways to get attention on social media. It is tough to get your existing and future customers’ attention on social media because of the ever-increasing crowd and dwindling attention span. But you will never get attention on your social media profiles if you don’t speak up. Otherwise, there will be nothing memorable about you or your brand.

Finding a niche and differing slightly from your competitors will make you memorable and help get social media attention. The primary goal of your social media marketing strategy is to stand out among those within your field by being more engaging, and these tips in this article will help you achieve the plan to get attention on social media. You don’t need to be a social media genius to implement these tips.

How Do You Write Engaging Content for Social Media?

Algorithms on social media platforms are making it increasingly harder to generate engagement with your social media posts. But by applying some simple writing tips, you can get your message across to a broader audience.

By investing resources into posting on social media, you will get a good return on your investment (ROI). Your ROI will meet or exceed the goals you’ve identified for each platform – but if you post without a social media strategy, much of your efforts will go to waste.

Having a social media strategy and tactics based on your unique business goals, resources, and time is crucial to success. Even with well laid out tactics, you still need to create content that appeals to your specific audience and inspire them to take action.

As social media platforms grow to reward authentic social interactions, social media engagement has become vital in any marketing strategy. Click To Tweet

Remember, users’ attention span on social media lasts for seconds, so the first 3-4 words of your post are crucial! As a general rule, keep your posts between 100 – 250 characters for optimum engagement. The more attention you have on your post, the better the reach.

With social media posting, the way you write your posts is the key to engaging with your audience. Integrating powerful keywords into your posts produces increased engagement and motivation.

Posts with images or videos receive more “Likes” on average than a plain text post. You can also drive more engagement by asking questions, e.g.

This or that?
Item A vs item B?
Agree or disagree?
Like or dislike?

The goal with any social media tweet or post is to move your followers to take immediate action, so simply adding “Contact Us” or “Learn More” can help too. Invest in learning how to write for social media and start creating better content. In short, your social media content needs to follow through on the promises your posts make.

Why Is It Important to Engage with Customers on Social Media?

Social media engagement is more than just the accumulation of followers across social platforms. Companies that focus on building their social media engagement can benefit from better marketing reach and greater brand awareness yielding new customers and better ROI.

Social media marketing strategies reflect the reality that companies must market to customers where they are. Social media engagement expands your marketing reach because social networks are global, meaning that your business’s fans and customers can engage with you from anywhere in the world.

If a customer likes your Facebook page or one of your posts, friends and followers of that person will see that engagement. Your brand’s followers may see this engagement, and overall awareness increases. Offering an incentive that triggers a social share is one of the best-value social media marketing initiatives.

As already mentioned, social media engagement is a measure of how people interact with your brand's social media accounts and content. Click To Tweet

Social media started as a way for people to hang out with friends and loved ones online. Today it has turned into a place where brands can engage in meaningful conversations and turn those conversations into followers and customers. So it would help if you improve your engagement strategy.

As already mentioned, social media engagement is a measure of how people interact with your brand’s social media accounts and content. Use tools to track mentions, comments, and conversations in a central place. Establishing your brand’s voice is especially important if multiple people manage your social media accounts. By sharing content with GIFs and emojis, you add a bit of personality to your social media channels.

42 Ways of Engaging Your Audience on Social Media

Identify your ideal social networks for your campaigns based on your industry, product, service or niche.
Define your audience in terms of their demographics and psychographic.
Create content that appeals to your target audience. Curate and share others’ valuable content with your following. Schedule your tweets and posts to send at the best times to increase your reach.
Use strategic hashtags to double your engagement rate.
Encourage sharing at the right time of the day, multiple times, to increase organic reach and engagement of your post.
Write strong leads and use emotional headlines to increase shares and click-throughs.
Use visuals (images, memes, animated GIFs and emoticons) to increase shares and click-throughs. According to this article, compared to other types of content, visual content is over 40x more likely to get shared on social media.
Implement videos to take advantage of the estimated 100+ million hours of videos watched on social media daily, and research suggests it generates 1,200% more shares than images or text.
Listen and be responsive.
Regularly update your images and video content.
Be inviting and tag your guest bloggers or people you’ve quoted in your social messages.
Post standalone tweets and post without external links to increase shares.
Recycle your evergreen content to share timeless, fantastic content.
Create a Facebook group to build a community around your company or brand.
Host or join Twitter Chats using relevant hashtags to build your following on Twitter.
Capitalise on your most-shared content by sharing infographics on Pinterest.
Create and join groups/forums on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Hold or join Q&A sessions on all your social media channels.
Conduct polls and surveys.
Host and run contests and giveaways and offer incentives for shares and conversions
Appeal to your followers to engage with your content.
Make it easy for people to engage by responding quickly and thoroughly to any comment.
Respond quickly, thoroughly and in a personal and conversational manner to any questions and comments on your tweets or posts to keep the conversation going.
Stay on top of current affairs and engage through social issues where appropriate.
Use social media tools to schedule your tweets and posts and find new followers.
Use features like Instagram Stories to highlight your team and your company culture.
Create images or graphics to show off customer testimonials or as a resource for marketers.
Share articles and other social media content you find interesting
Ask questions and invoke comments and expressions from your followers.
Provide Incentives for persons to engage with your content using relevant hashtags.
Talk about your industry topic, latest trends and issues, and not just about your brand.
Use analytics tools to monitor engagement and gain insights into your target audience’s activities.
Change your page profile photos and cover photos regularly
Give people a reason to follow you by providing value through your content.
Be entertaining, and use humour to engage.
Explore paid social but never buy followers and fans and have them pretend to like your brand.
Remember, each social network is unique, so don’t treat them the same.
Be mindful of the quality of content you post, and don’t stuff your followers feed with spam.
Practice humility. Don’t expect everyone to follow your brand and engage. Your content has to earn their trust and capture their interest.
Avoid using each post as an opportunity to make a sale. Make your content tactful, informative, educative and entertaining.
Be careful with the use of hashtags. Refrain from hijacking every trending hashtag to promote your brand.
In connecting with readers on an emotional level and using emotional headlines, avoid stirring up anger and wrathful feelings in your audience.

Conclusion

There you have it! These are the 42 ways of engaging your audience on social media. Social media campaigns can overwhelm us, and sometimes we all need a helping hand in launching our campaigns. Do you have more questions? Would you like instant answers from supportive marketers to your marketing questions? Click here to schedule a phone call.

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