Tips to increase your brand’s engagement on social media (BLOG)

Your reader’s newsfeed gets bombarded with news and various posts, but have you ever wondered how great content marketers make people stop scrolling, read, and start a conversation?

Yes, these savvy content producers have mastered the art of engaging with their audience.

The growth and success of social media efforts can be attributed to the interactions of the brand with its target audience. These interactions or engagement can be measured by the quality and number of likes, shares, retweets and comments.

But how do we actually do that?

Before anything else, we must not forget why people use social media. People want to connect with others through information or content that they care about. Moreover, they want to be entertained. They want to be educated. Or perhaps they’re curious about what other people are doing and hope to find ‘inspiration’ for daily activities. Social media platforms are also a good way for people to create or join groups based on what interests them. People appreciate a positive sense of belonging.

Having said all this, we can figure out our role as a brand. Having a social media page is not only our opportunity to confirm that we exist, but as a brand, we want to connect. We don’t just want to sell or to push our products and services. Believe me, if all your social media content marketing strategy is too product-centric, chances are, you’ll be gone before dawn.

What we really want is to be their friend, the one who understands the challenges of their day-to-day lives. We want to be the one who celebrates their accomplishments with them. Most of all, we want to provide value whether or not they purchase our products and services.

When we understand this, we’ll be able to dig deeper into what kinds of content hook our readers and customers. As a brand, we’ll be able to become the friend they want to stay in touch with.

And here’s how:

Quality vs. Quantity

Posting three or four times a day doesn’t guarantee high engagement with your customers. The question is not about how often but what you post.

When posting, focus on the quality of your content. Marketers have many different buzzwords for it, but when we say “quality content”, we mean content that is worth reading. Content worth reading should answer the following questions:

• Is the information true or from a reliable source?
• Is your post readable enough?
• Do you include high-quality images, videos or GIFs to make it more visually pleasing?
• Is your text free of grammatical or spelling errors?
• Do you make sure that the voice of the content aligns or reflects your brand messaging?
• Does your content somehow address your reader’s needs of the moment?
• Is it timely?
• Do you use relevant hashtags?
• Is your headline direct, short and catchy?

If your answer is ‘yes’, then you are on track. Now, the next area you want to focus on is, “What kind of content should we post?”

Here are some post types you may want to try:

“Caption this!”

When you’ve got a powerful, funny, thought-provoking image, it’s best to leave it open to your audience’s interpretation.

Poll Questions

Poll question Facebook posts are made in a way that is easy for your readers to click and answer. You can ask for your readers’ preferences between two of your products; you can also ask about their lifestyle preferences. Not only do you spark a conversation, you also get feedback on ways to improve your current set of products or services.

Contest/Giveaways

Whether you do it on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, people are always up for chances to win something.  Whether you talk about your product or an interesting company story, contests and giveaways certainly fire up your engagement, especially for coveted prizes!

After announcing the winners, maximise your opportunity for more engagement by publishing a post about the giveaway and making sure that you keep in touch with the winners and participants.

Although you might need to shell out a chunk of your resources, it’s certainly worth giving a try, if you can, to increase your fan base and increase your interaction with your audience.

Question posts

When we are thrown a question, don’t we get the urge to answer it? The same thing applies to social media. However, because they are too often focused on providing news and updates posts, some content producers forget that simply asking a question of our readers is a sure-fire way to drive more engagement.

Look at these examples:

“Happy Chinese New Year! How are you celebrating today?”

“What is the best gift for Dads?”

“Do you feel more productive in the morning or at night?”

There can be a lot of topics to talk about; however, make sure that you spark a fun conversation thread that is within your niche.

Videos

According to the latest video marketing statistics, 81% of businesses use videos as a marketing tool. These results can either be in the form of a conversion rate, engagement, and increased brand awareness as well as organic traffic.

But what kind of videos are worth talking about?

The quality and length of the video determine if it’s worth sharing or not. Bear in mind that while people use social media many times a day, they don’t actually have the luxury of time to view an hour of posted video. If your viewers are still at the introductory part of your story after 20 minutes, they’re most likely to click pause and scroll down hoping for more entertaining posts from other sources.

Because human beings tend to have a short attention span, we need to keep our video post length at 1 to 3 minutes. According to research, viewers have 80% retention for 1-minute videos while 60% for 3-minute videos.

Among other types of posts such as text, links, and images, quality snack-sized videos get the highest engagement rate. However, this doesn’t mean that you should be flooding your timeline with video content and drop other post types; rather a healthy mix of all of them is what you should be aiming for.

Hook your audience with CTAs

A call-to-action phrase wraps up your post and tells your readers what to do next. Remember that our post’s purpose is not only to educate or entertain, but also to provide them with more opportunities to access valuable information, by either encouraging them to visit our blog or website, download a book, watch a video or follow our page.

Be witty and funny

Whether your readers are on social media to escape from boredom or not, it pays to be witty, entertaining and funny. This is a great opportunity for your brand to create a positive projection.

Don’t just post, continue the conversation

When we’ve finally crafted our social media content plan and strategy, sometimes we forget that we shouldn’t just schedule and publish posts, but rather we should monitor them and look for ways to add more value to the conversation. The last thing you want is for your readers to perceive your social media page posts as automated or ‘impersonal’.

Maximise your notification section. Answer their questions, suggest more information or appreciate them. In so doing, you’re not just gaining more knowledge about your audience, but also you are being the brand that is also their friend.

We have years of experience helping businesses across Southeast Asia and Australia use social media to reach and engage their target audience. Find out more about how we use social media at NEO360 to find out how you can make the most out of your social media, now.