Businesses focus on social media marketing for a range of reasons, from attracting leads to deepening relationships with existing customers. Dollar for dollar, social media marketing is one of the most effective types of marketing. But many companies find that they create profiles, stockpile content, and then begin their foray into the online world only to hear crickets. If you’re not getting a response from your market or connecting effectively with your customers, here are three strategies that you can employ today to increase your engagement on different social media channels.
Lay the right foundation
Many companies miss three core components of launching a social media campaign. The first is laying the right foundation by fully completing your profiles. Did you select a name 
that’s related or identical to your brand? Does your description feature your company name, website, and any obvious keywords? Do whatever you can to help clearly position your business and make it easy for customers looking for you online to find you.
The second is to take a professional approach to your overall presentation. Do your copy, images, and status updates speak to an engaging demeanor? If you’re treating your social media updates more like a personal account, you may be confusing your connections. Finally, connect with your existing market. People on your newsletter list, customers, employees and others in your network can help you gain some easy, early traction and increase the visibility of your content. Investing the time into these three steps can help save you time and effort.
Regularly post valuable content
Your content strategy on social media needs to focus on quality and frequency. The quality of your posts is determined by how much value they bring to your reader. There are several questions you can ask yourself about each post you’re considering:
- How does this help my customer or prospect?
- Does this provide a unique insight or inspiration that’s relevant to my work?
- Will this entertain or delight my audience in a way that’s relevant to my brand?
- Can I provide an update that shares a bit of personality or flare associated with my brand?
- Does this have an urgent message that relates to my business that would interest my customers, such as a time limited sale?
Frequency is another concern for social marketers. While you should always focus on quality over quantity, the reality of the social media world is that it moves quickly. If you’re not putting out enough content, you won’t connect to your readers. “What’s enough” varies from network to network, and audience to audience. It’s important to test and see how increased posting frequency improves engagement. As a rule of thumb, one posting per day is often enough on Facebook where faster moving networks such as Twitter benefits from multiple posts per day.
Start the engagement yourself
One of the easiest ways to increase engagement is to begin engaging yourself. How often are you reading, sharing, and liking other people’s content? Actively engaging and helping other people in your space achieve their social media goals is the first step to capturing their interest and encouraging them to return the favor. Start by finding quality content that your audience would enjoy, ideally from thought leaders you want to connect with.
Share their materials. Leave meaningful comments, like their posts, and generally engage. Use Robert Cialdini’s principle of reciprocity – the idea that people are more willing to help you if you help them – to gain some leverage in your social media efforts. It’s also important to engage with the people who are your early supporters. Be sure to thank people when they share your materials, and engage with them whenever appropriate. Building a relationship starts with a single step.
Increasing your engagement with customers and your market through social media can reap numerous benefits, from easy market research opportunities to an increase in sales. The first steps to increased engagement begin with you. If you’re struggling to see the results you wanted from your social media campaigns, contact us today to discuss a social media management package to help you reach your business goals.