Before you plan your next post, start using these easy engagement tips to set your pages on fire!
Read on for our favorite social engagement ideas to boost everything from page likes, post likes, comments, shares, followers, to full-blown stark raving mad fans!
1. Instagram – Boost Engagement & Conversions
50% of Instagram users follow at least one business, the app has continued to grow in popularity since being purchased by Facebook in 2012. Making Insta ideal for communicating your brand’s message using visual content – although posting pimped up images is only one part of the equation. If it’s the engagement you’re after (and it is …), it’s important to pimp up the captions that go with those awesome pics!
I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts see Aaron’s full article at Social Media Today.
Write With an Authentic Tone of Voice – Instagram users are not expecting a serious tone of voice – they’re generally using the app in their free time to look at cool visuals and be entertained.
Include a CTA (Call To Action) – 65% of top-performing brands post on Instagram feature products. Directly instructing people to check out your product or make a purchase can work well on this platform.
Utilize Hashtags – Instagram posts with a minimum of one hashtag generate 12.6% more engagement than those without. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!
Include Emojis – Almost 50% of captions and comments on Instagram contain at least one emoji. While there’s a range of emojis at your disposal, the most popular one is the heart.
Mention Other Instagram Users – It’s important to remember that Instagram is a social network. Brands that relentlessly self-promote with little regard to the community never do well.
Place Important Content at the Beginning – In a user’s Instagram feed, captions are cut off after the first few lines. To see the entire post, they have to click the “View More” button – which they will not if the first few lines are unappealing.
2. Facebook – Boost Engagement, Leads & Sales
Explore 11 of the most effective strategies for enticing your Facebook Followers to get enthusiastic about your page and start encouraging likes, comments, and shares with their closest friends. Facebook is the perfect platform for small businesses to build a relationship with their customers and many are outperforming their big-budget competitors by employing a personalized social media approach.
I’ve corrected the main tips of Andrea’s case studies below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit Social Media Examiner for her full article:
Move Your Audience to Action – Litographs came up with a fun idea to create temporary tattoos of sentences from Alice in Wonderland. They invited 5,000 people to join the world’s longest tattoo chain. This kind of idea is a great way to mobilize your audience and make them part of something special.
Host a Facebook Party – Mamavation is a website that teaches natural wellness and nutrition and champions GMO-free food and products. They have held fun Facebook parties to give away gift certificates and discounts to people who engaged with each post.
Show Personality – Through a Dog’s Ear is a small 7-year-old company that makes music to help calm anxious dogs. Their Facebook page is filled with personal photos of the founder and her dogs.
Incorporate Humor – Cool Mom Picks is a website that curates gifts, gear, tech, and resources for moms. They have great video tutorials and they bring together interesting finds in blog posts. They also use humor and show some personality in their posts.
Have Fun – think about using Facebook as it was originally intended: a social site where you let people know what you’re doing. Author Erica Spindler does a great job of getting personal and having some fun. Share things that you find funny or you feel are important for people to know.
Be Responsive – Make it a habit to respond to and comments on your messenger inbox quickly.
Create a Facebook Event – If you have events on Facebook, re-share them, post in the events to get more visibility, and encourage people to join them.
Post to Your Page and Profile – David Newman of Do It Marketing uses his Facebook page and personal profile to market his business, which helps speakers get more opportunities. He’s connected with many speakers personally, so it makes sense for him to get an extra transaction by posting about his business on his personal profile. If you occasionally share your business page posts on your profile, you can extend your reach.
Invest in Videos – Videos are huge on Facebook and Learn Cake Decorating Online uses them effectively on their page. They have a featured video and regular quick videos that get lots of views and engagement. The company also uses the 22Social app to give away a free video class to build the email list and then offer membership to people who sign up.
Provide Great Local Content Realtors sometimes find Facebook a challenging place to market. Posting images of houses is great, but Realty Austin offers great local content, too.
Go Behind the Scenes – Getting personal on Facebook is a great tactic, but so is giving your community a sneak peek at something no one else can see. The Celtic band Barra MacNeils literally takes people behind the scenes during their shows.
3. Twitter – Boost Engagement & Attract Followers
Social Engagement on Twitter helps to build and nurture a relationship between you and other industry peers and experts. Hearting, retweeting, and commenting on each other’s quality posts build peer relationships and industry street cred for your small business. Clicks on the content you post can drive traffic directly to your site, increasing leads, visitors, and sales.
I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit Adesspresso for Ana’s full article:
Engage with Other Users Content – If you want other users to engage with your content, a good way to start is to always interact with their first. Like, respond to, and retweet your users content when you can, and following them can also help.
Retweet Other Users’ Tweets – You want to do this early and often. I’m singling out retweeting as engagement because this is what most users value the most; not only are you liking their content enough to confirm it, but you value it enough to share it.
Keep Your Tweets Brief – We are all forced to keep our tweets reliably briefly automatically, with Twitter limiting our posts to 140 characters. This is challenging enough as it is, but limiting our posts just a little more can actually increase engagement.
Share a Variety of Links – If you want to get clicks to your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets. Also, I like to use this quick link shortener tool for posts on the fly!
Respond When Someone Tweets to You – This is particularly challenging for large brands or brands that have a large amount of engagement (even if it’s just when major content goes live), but doing your best to respond in some way when a user tweets to you can go a long way.
Know Your Peak Hours – Just like with Facebook, there will be certain times of the day or days of the week when more of your users will be active on the site or more likely to engage with your content. By being able to find those peak hours and posting them, you’ll get more views and you’ll be more likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post.
Use Twitter Ads – When you’re looking to best engagement quickly, Twitter Ads are a good way to do so, especially if you do not have a lot of followers or followers that often engage with your content. Twitter Ads do cost money (and are more expensive than Facebook Ads), but they can still help increase engagement when you need it. Promoted tweets work best for this purpose.
Always Provide Value – Social media, for many, has become an environment where many users will share every thought that pops into their heads. While non-brand users can get away with letting the world know that they can not decide if they want a coke or a lemonade, brands definitely can not.
Always Use Hashtags – Hashtags are an essential part of Twitter usage; just like with Instagram, you pretty much expect a Tweet to come with at least one hashtag attached to it. Not only do hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they search the hashtag you’re using, but they can also increase engagement.
Share Images – Images are an important part of social media; This is particularly true when we’re limited to 140 characters.
4. LinkedIn – 5 Ways to Increase Engagement with Your Content on LinkedIn
Fast approaching 400 million users, LinkedIn has become more than just an online resume platform. Learning how to use LinkedIn marketing tips is essential for any small business. LinkedIn is still drastically underutilized making it an easy opportunity to make a splash if your target market is hanging out on this professional platform.
I’ve curated the main tips below; if you’re after the real nuts and bolts visit LinkedIn Business for Pearce’s full article:
Keep it concise and prompt an action – Drive higher engagement by keeping description copy <70 characters and feature a call to action. Keep in mind that copy will get truncated on the desktop after 100 characters and likely adversely affect your engagement rates.
Do not just report the news, analyze it – Yes, your audience desires to stay up to speed on industry news and trends. But they also want to know the impact it will have on them. On top of reporting key industry news and trends, take it a step further and offer key insights, takeaways, and your unique perspective.
Repurpose compelling 3rd party research – Creating great, in-depth content is time and resource-intensive. Find a 3rd party source that is already developing the type of content that aligns with your audience’s interests.
Use the power of video to tell your story – YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare videos play natively within the LinkedIn newsfeed. This allows you to engage your audience without disabling their experience. It also allows you to tell your story in a much more vivid, creative format.
Professionals are people too – While it’s always an effective strategy to aim to create content that helps solve your audiences’ business challenges, keep in mind that they are too people too. Human interest stories help prove your brand in an engaging, less overt way, as well as diversify the type of content you are publishing.
5. YouTube – Boost Visitor Engagement & Channel Subscriptions
Using YouTube to market your small business, involves creating videos with content your target market will find engaging on some level (entertaining or educational) are the most common formats. While social platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have a strong focus on creating, posting, and sharing different types of content, creating content for YouTube means you’ll be investing your time in video production and video production only. Learn how to set up and create valuable and engaging content on your YouTube channel to attract an engaged fan base of subscribers to your business.
Set up your YouTube channel – Setting up a channel could not be easier; in fact, if you already have a Google account, you technically already have a YouTube channel, even if you do not know it.
Add a banner and create a trailer – Before you start focusing on putting out video content regularly, it’s important to make your page on YouTube visually appealing.
Create videos that show off your brand – Is your brand serious and formal? Prank or joke-style videos are probably a bad fit. On the flip side, if you’ve built your brand tone around a light, conversational style, do not create video content that feels stuffy or overly professional.
Post your video’s on your blog – With YourTubePlayer you can easily generate and customize Youtube embed codes from the video ID or URL with options like autoplay, loop, hide controls, eliminate related videos and much more.
Focus on informational videos, how-to-style content, video series, or vlog content – If you have a product or service, feature videos of your product in use. Similarly, if you offer a service, show how your service benefits customers. Informational videos are a great place to showcase your product or service in “the real world,” to give customers a sense of what’s in store for them if they buy from you.
Feature client testimonials or other customer feedback – When brainstorming what kinds of content you can feature on your new YouTube channel, you may want to look to your satisfied clients and customers. What can they say about your business that would make a valuable addition to your video content?
Pay attention to title keywords – Much of your organic traffic will be search-driven. That is to say, if someone is searching “braided updo tutorial,” and you just happened to have those keywords in the title of your YouTube video, there is a higher chance that searchers will find your video.
Subscribe to similar channels and interact with them – One of the best ways to get your YouTube channel out in front of a potential new set of viewers is to leave a thoughtful comment on other Youtuber’s videos (ideally, on a YouTube channel that produces content similar to your own). Hopefully, your comment will be upvoted by other viewers, increasing its visibility and there before potential clicks back to your own channel.
Interact with your viewers – Once you start getting engaged on your own videos, make sure you are reciprocating! Respond to your YouTube comments in a thoughtful way that makes it clear you are tailoring your response to each commenter. Make sure you avoid responses that sound canned or insincere.
Include a call to action and track your success – What is your goal with creating YouTube videos? Is it to increase brand awareness, build up a more comprehensive social media presence, drive viewers back to your site? There are plenty of different goals you could have, and be clear what they are early on. Including a call to action in your YouTube videos is a great way to push people to take the steps you’d like them to take that coincide with your chosen goal.
Finally, remember the goal here is to create a raving fan base. In order to capture and convert all the traffic, your highly engaged posts have generated, you will need a responsible Lead Capture Page.
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