7 Tips to Improve Social Media Engagement for Your Business
You created social media profiles for your business and started posting on them. As the months go by, you find that not many people interact with your business on social. You’re feeling frustrated that your social media strategy isn’t driving the engagement and leads you want.
It’s okay — you’re not alone. Many businesses experience this problem when they launch a social media campaign. Luckily, we have all the tips you need to improve social media engagement.
Keep reading to get seven ways to improve social media engagement. To get the latest tips and tricks for marketing your business on social media and across the web, subscribe to Revenue Weekly!
1. Encourage user-generated content
First on our list of ways to improve social media engagement is to encourage user-generated content.
User-generated content is content that your audience creates, and you share on your business’s profile. It’s a great tactic to help you get users to interact with your brand and get their content featured on your profile.
You can encourage your followers to post photos with your products or results from your services. Invite them to tag your business in the picture. When you find their posts, ask permission to post it on your social profile, and once granted, schedule the content to post on your page.
User-generated content is a great way to improve social media engagement because it encourages people to post about your brand, which can lead to fantastic word-of-mouth recommendations to try your product or service.
It also presents your followers with an authentic experience of your product or services, which can motivate people to engage with your brand more. They get a first-hand look at someone who bought your product and how they liked it and experienced it.
This content helps build people’s confidence in your brand and encourages them to engage with your brand in the future.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Create a hashtag for your user-generated content so you can find the content faster. Aerie’s #AerieREAL tag is an excellent example of using a hashtag to track and find user-generated content. People use this hashtag to showcase Aerie’s products.
2. Reply to your audience
Replying to your audience is one of the easiest ways to improve social media engagement, but companies often overlook it. Many businesses will post content and leave it at that. This action is a mistake — you want to comment back to your followers and engage them in conversation.
It takes two to have a conversation, so you must spend the time conversing with your audience. If people comment on your content, comment back. Engage in conversation and start a dialogue with your brand.
If you post content on your profile, monitor the comments, and take time to comment back.
Even if someone leaves a comment like “This is awesome,” you can reply and say, “Thanks, we love it too!”
Having conversations with your audience is one of the most effective social media engagement strategies because it encourages them to keep engaging with your business. You motivate them to comment on future posts and connect with your company in the future.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Use the person’s name when you respond to their comments. It helps them feel more connected to your business because you’re addressing them personally. Chewy is a great example of addressing the person’s comments while using their name.
3. Ask questions
Next on our list of tips for increasing social media engagement is to ask questions. When you post questions as content, you can get your audience to engage more with your business. It creates an easy way for you to get your audience to engage with you on social media.
When you ask questions, make sure you stick to industry and brand-related questions.
If you owned a clothing boutique, you wouldn’t ask people if they like chocolate or vanilla milkshakes better. You want to ask questions related to your company so you can get people thinking about your brand and products.
So, for example, if you owned an ice cream shop, asking people if they like chocolate or vanilla milkshakes better would be a great way to get people to interact with your post and share which flavor they like best.
It could even encourage people to share a different flavor, which opens a new door for conversation.
Asking questions is one of the best social media engagement strategies for getting people to participate. You encourage them to become part of the conversation and interact with your brand.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Go beyond either-or questions and ask some open-ended questions. Instead of asking, “Do you like chocolate or vanilla milkshakes better?” try asking, “What’s your favorite milkshake flavor?” Open-ended questions can leave more room for dialogue and encourage more people to engage.
4. Use high-quality visuals
If you want to know how to increase social media engagement, start by using visuals.
You can use numerous types of visuals in your content, like:
- Photos
- Videos
- Infographics
- GIFs
Sharing visual content will help you catch your audience’s attention and get them to engage with your post. You can use a variety of these visuals to help keep your strategy fresh and keep it interesting for your business.
Visuals appeal to people more than a wall of text. Even if you have text in your post, including a high-quality, high-resolution visual can make the difference in whether someone interacts with your content.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Design your visuals with your brand in mind. You want to create visuals with your brand’s aesthetic, so when leads see your visuals, they know it’s from your brand and build that recognition as a result.
5. Post frequently
Next on our list of tips for increasing social media engagement is to post frequently. If you see low engagement with your posts, it may be because people don’t see your content.
Like we stated earlier, your followers are seeing content from friends, family, and other businesses. They see tons of content in their newsfeed, so if you don’t post often, your audience might miss it.
To combat this issue, you can use strategies to increase social engagement, like posting content regularly.
When you post frequently, you create more opportunities for people to find your content. It increases the likelihood that you’ll reach your audience and get them to engage with your posts.
So, how frequently should you post on social media?
As a starting point, you’ll want to post to each of your social media platforms at least twice a week. You can try that frequency out and monitor the results to see if you need to post more than that to boost engagement.
Your frequency will depend upon your platform and your audience.
On a platform like Facebook, you won’t post as often as you would on a network like Twitter because of the nature of the feeds. It will take some time to test and figure out what frequency works best for each platform and your audience.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Use a social media scheduling tool, like Hootsuite or Buffer, to keep your social media campaigns organized. When you post frequently, it’s easy to get overwhelmed or forget to post. These social scheduling tools enable you to schedule content in advance to create a more cohesive campaign.
6. Try creating live videos
Creating live videos is another one of the ways to improve social media engagement.
Live videos enable you to create real-time interactions between you and your audience. It’s a great way to get them to engage with your brand and get to know your business.
When you create live videos, you can make them around any subject. Whether it’s a new product release, a tour of your company, or a Q&A, you create an opportunity for your audience to connect with you directly and learn more about your business.
You create a dialogue between you and your audience, which encourages them to engage with your brand in the future.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: Advertise before you go live! Market your live video through your social profile first, so your audience knows to expect it. It will help you build some excitement around your video and encourage more people to engage with your video when you go live.
7. Track your social performance
If you want to know how to improve social media engagement, start with the essential step of tracking your social performance. Keep tabs on how your posts perform, so you can identify where you can improve your social campaign.
You can use numerous tools to check your social media performance. Some platforms, like Facebook, have built-in analytics tools so you can see how your posts perform and if you’re reaching people interested in your business.
Aside from built-in programs, you can use third-party tools to get insight on campaign performance.
If you use Hootsuite or Buffer for scheduling posts, you can also use them to monitor post performance. You can use other social media management tools like Brand24 or TweetReach to track your performance too.
Bonus tip to increase social media engagement: If you don’t have time to monitor your social campaigns, consider investing in social media management services from a social media agency, like WebFX. You can have a dedicated specialist monitor and manage your social profiles for you so that you can focus on other critical tasks.
Improve social media engagement for your business today
When you have ways to improve social media engagement, you can help your business reoptimize your strategy, so more leads interact with your content and follow your company on social media. If you aren’t sure where to start, WebFX is here to help.
We have a team of over 250 social media experts that can help you create a social media campaign. We know how to create campaigns that drive results, too — we’ve driven over $2.4 billion in sales and over 6.3 million leads for our clients in the last five years alone.
Ready to get started? Want to know why social media marketing is worth it?
Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our social media management services!