With over 3.2 billion social media users in 2019, it’s easy to see why social media is the present and future of marketing. Social media offers a free way of creating massive amounts of brand awareness and exposure, which can, in turn, lead to additional company products. The key to social media success, however, depends on how well you can interact with the online community. The keys to successful engagement hover around three essential methodologies:
Adding relevant and interactive stories and posts.
Interacting with other profiles of similar interests and
Post frequently with relevant hashtags
- Adding relevant and interactive stories and posts:
Simple “sales style” posts about your business are not nearly enough to grow a social media account that has constant engagement. What users want is an interactive experience. This can be accomplished using interactive stories such as polls, surveys, and questionnaires. Not only do they serve as excellent resources of information gathering but they help dictate future marketing material.
Additionally, engaging your followers on a personal level creates a community Polls and surveys allow the user to find out what specifically the customers are interested in and what they would want to see more often. Empowering the people interacting on your account will keep them interested and make them feel important.
The overall goal of keeping everyone interested is so they eventually purchase your company’s product or service. The more followers that go on your profile and interact with questions and scenarios, the more likely they end up becoming a paying customer in some form or another.
2. Interacting with other profiles of similar interests
Following along the lines of making the consumer feel important and keeping them interested, engaging in other accounts is just as important. Gary Vaynerchuk explained how to do this best when discussing his “$1.80 strategy”, “leaving your .02 cents on the top 9 trending Instagram posts for 10 different hashtags that are relevant to your brand or business every single day.”
Whatever your business entails, leaving personalized comments for 10 different posts on ten relevant topics daily will dramatically increase engagement and lead to a much higher chance of those accounts you commented on eventually giving a follow back and engaging on your account. Social media is a community; if you provide value and show interest in the material of others, they will reciprocate.
3. Post frequently with relevant hashtags
You can have the best quality content while constantly engaging on other accounts. However, if you are not constantly pushing content on your account, you can never hope to build your social media brand. For optimal engagement, daily content should be posted at least five times a week. Try adding variety to your content, as users don’t want to see the same old content every week. Using relevant hashtags is the key to getting your content in front of as many eyes as possible.
The majority of people use hashtags on social media to find posts about what they are interested in, so having hashtags geared to your post is essential. It is recommended that you have no more than 2-5 hashtags on Facebook and Twitter, whereas for Instagram, it is recommended that you have between 20-30 relevant hashtags.
Following these three general steps will increase your engagement significantly. However, they must be done consistently, as growing an account takes time and patience. Explosive growth will not come in a matter of days, but if done properly, you will reap the fruits of your labor shortly. Contact us and ask about our social media strategy division!