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 are able to 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 as well as making 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 best 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 10 different relevant topics a day will dramatically increase engagement and lead to a much higher chance of those accounts you commented on eventually giving a follow back as well as engaging on your account. Social media is a community and 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. You should have daily content posted a minimum of 5 times a week for optimal engagement. Try to add a variety in your content as users don’t want to see the same old content every week. The key to getting your content in front of as many eyes as possible is the use of relevant hashtags. The majority of people go through social media using hashtags to find posts on what they are interested in, so having hashtags geared to your post is essential. It is recommended that on facebook and twitter you have no more than 2-5 hashtags, 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 in the near future. Contact us & ask about our social media strategy division!