Source: SmallBizTrends, 8/24/2016
Among the most important tasks of digital marketers is bringing their brands to life. Part of that task involves being personable and relatable–someone users can identify and engage with comfortably. Sounds obvious, right? Well, despite knowing that, many still struggle to cultivate an engaging social media presence. This is problematic, because if social media is a key outlet and your presence on platforms is failing to engage users, the content and/or services you have to offer will likely be underutilized.
Aside from mastering the art of being charming in 140 character tweets, there’s more to curating an effective social media presence that inspires social engagement. By balancing more analytic aspects of social media engagement with an anecdotal presence (and in addition to a polished management practices), you can learn the ins and outs of social media engagement. Check out these tips and see what works for your brand.
Social Engagement Tips
Use Scheduling Tools
There’s nothing more tedious than having to manually push content every time you create something new. When you’re reposting and publishing while also trying to engage with your audience, something is likely to suffer.
That’s why social media apps and tools like CoSchedule or Sprout Social can be so helpful. Such tools allow you to create custom messages for your posts and/or manage interactions with other people from a clean, user-friendly platform.
Get Personal
Speaking of custom messaging, being personal and unique when posting content is key to encouraging user engagement. Nothing says “spam” like a social media account that cranks out content without a comment, description, or any indication as to what the piece is about or why someone would want to click on it.
Be enticing and personal in every post, and look for ways to drive clicks. Framing your posts with a question, a quote, or some other text will drive the engagement you’re looking for. You might even take the Larry Kim route and use emojis to lure clicks and engagement!
Use Compelling Language
Also along the lines of creating personal and custom messages for your social media posts is the importance of word selection. As you’ve likely noticed based on the kind of content and posts you click on, there are certain words that jump out to people and compel them to click and engage.
Go back and look at which headlines and posts have drawn the most social engagement, and see if there are specific adjectives or verbs that helped you achieve those interactions. As a principle of psychology, the human brain is wired to respond to captivating words, such as “free” or “amazing.”
Pay Attention to Data
One of the best ways to assess and strategize future performance is by looking at past performance. At the very least, spending some time looking at Google Analytics can show you what has or has not worked and potentially offer some guide posts for the type of content that engages users the most.
Try finding a common ground in your most successful posts. Was it the wording you used? The content format? Then look at what hasn’t worked in the past, and try and identify why.
Handle the Hard Stuff
You might be surprised at how addressing negative user engagement can inspire positive user engagement. When user interaction turns sour, one of the worst things you can do is ignore it. Every form of social engagement matters!
Use the negative attention to draw positive attention, and showcase your brand’s ability to problem solve. It will show that there’s a person behind the social profile who cares about their audience and is invested in bringing the brand to life.
