You’ve already heard a lot about the importance of establishing active social media accounts in order to promote your business, regardless of what industry you work in or how large your company is. But even if you have a lot of social media accounts, they may not be doing you any good if you’ve been unable to actually create any engagement on them.
So how can you go about creating engagement in your social media accounts, interacting with your audience, and increasing sales and customer satisfaction? Continue reading for a few tips on how to create social media buzz.
#1. Create a Resource and Tag the Original Authors and Influencers
Curating content from multiple sources into a single informative resource has always been a great way to generate traffic. When you share posts like this on social media, be sure to tag the original authors of any pages you linked to, as well as any other influencers that would fit in the context of the share.
This would include tagging anyone mentioned in the post, as well as just random friends and followers who might be interested enough to make a comment. In case you haven’t caught on yet, the goal here is to tag the right people with the hopes that some of them will like, share, and comment to stir up the first signs of engagement.
Offering a simple discount or the chance to win a free product in exchange for a bit of engagement is a simple yet surprisingly effective method. This might seem like a semi-spammy tactic, but if your brand has something legitimate to offer, it can go viral quickly.
You’ve probably seen gimmicky posts like this, claiming that “money will find you by the end of the day” if you like or comment. Sadly, even these pointless posts often have tens of thousands of comments and shares, and they’re offering literally nothing legitimate in return. Compare that with a real business offering users the possibility of a reward and it’s easy to see how big companies like Starbucks are able to generate so much user content and word of mouth with a single contest or social media share.
#3. Connect on Twitter Using Video
Start using Twitter more creatively by incorporating the use of videos. Utilise Vsnap to record a message that has a max length of one minute. Then send your personalised videos to followers. Or you can instead use the Vine app, but you’ll be restricted to just 6-second clips.
Use these short videos to encourage your followers to connect with you, not just to discuss your products. For example, you can give followers a tour of your office, craft a unique message based on something one of your followers said in a tweet, say thanks to a follower who has shared something you posted, say thanks to someone who just started following you, or even answer someone’s question about your business.
#4. Identify with a Common Cause
Social media is full of bandwagoners, believers, part-time activists, and other good people that are just waiting to band together over a common cause. You see it all the time – from pit bull lovers to Donald Trump supporters and Obama bashers, it seems everybody has a cause or a stance that they readily identify with and are instantly willing to share any content related to.
As a public brand you have to be careful about the stances you take, but when it comes to things like starting a contest to raise funds for charitable foundations, those are causes that can only be beneficial for PR. Look for common causes like this and stay genuinely involved with them and you’re guaranteed to see more people interacting with your posts and pages on any social site.
#5. Incorporate More Images into Your Posts
Rather than sticking with plain old text updates, start incorporating more images into your Facebook statuses and tweets. Research has shown that using images could increase retweets by as much as 35 percent, and your interaction rate on Facebook can go up to 85 percent.
You can incorporate more imagery into your Tweets by including infographics, behind the scenes photos, images of team members, collages, product images, and more.
#6. Post Light Hearted Content
Many businesses stick to purely posting business-related statuses on sites like Facebook. But if all you do is share professional posts, you may be driving followers away. After all, you never can take things too seriously on any social network.
Instead, take the time to post some light-hearted content as well. If your followers are having a rough day, a bit of humorous content can lighten their mood and be a ray of sunshine.
If your brand is known for sharing funny memes or stories, you’ll soon start to see your follower count and engagement increase, and may be able to attract people who had never even heard of you before.
#7. Host Contests and Giveaways
Another great way to boost interaction with your followers on social media, as well as get new followers, is by hosting giveaways and contests.
You can ask followers to fill in a contest entry form and sign up for your mailing list at the same time. In this way, you’ll get social media interaction while building your mailing list to continue maintaining a connection with those followers in the future.
Another idea would be to ask followers to share a story about your company for the chance to win a free product from your shop. In this way, they can prove how great your business is to others who might be new to your page, and you can also give away a product that they may never have purchased before but would buy again once they get to use it for the first time.
As you can see, there are several ways that you can create engagement with your social media accounts, but they all involve being a little creative and putting in some extra time and effort. The key to success, though, lies in using several different strategies, so incorporate a little bit of each to establish and maintain relationships with your followers.
Images: ” HILVERSUM, NETHERLANDS – APRIL 03, 2014: Social media are trending and both business as consumer are using it for information sharing and networking. Showing social media icons on smartphone. /Shutterstock.com“
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