There are no two ways about it, inspiring a defined audience to engage with your posts can be tricky – especially if you’re a small business or entrepreneur. Even the most attractive posts with the right hashtags can miss your audience, leaving you with a handful of likes from well-meaning friends, family, and employees but no one from your market. Luckily, with a few tips and tricks, you can boost your likes, loves, and overall engagement in no time at all.
So, stay tuned as we talk about all things social media and explore the ways you can motivate followers and keep them engaged for years to come…
Choose the right platforms
A common assumption is that to increase awareness, you need to be visible on as many social media platforms as possible. However, this is not the case. Pick the wrong platform for your audience, and you’ll end up with no one to hear your carefully crafted messaging.
It’s best to take the time to research your demographics vs the social media platform they use the most. For example, you’re more likely to find younger generations interacting with brands on TikTok and Instagram and more mature audiences on Facebook and Pinterest. Taking the time to define your audience allows you to spend less time wondering where they are and more time reaching them directly.
Plus, choosing platforms doesn’t need to be all or nothing – you may find that each platform offers a different and unique benefit. For example, you may not get a lot of engagement on Twitter, but if you want a fast way to conduct customer service, it might be a helpful platform as it offers fast support and signposting.
Define your audience
Social media can be effective because it allows you to communicate directly with your core audience. So, you kind of need to know who they are, right? As well as understanding who your users are and what they care about, defining your audience can help you build consumer trust which, in turn, inspires long-term brand loyalty.
There are several ways to go about it, and a useful starting point is digging deep into your existing customer data. Try to establish a firm demographic profile and use the data to investigate habits, such as engagement rates and the times of day when they are most active.
A deep dive into your competitor’s social media can be useful too. Focus on the direct competition here – those who provide the same products or services aimed at the same audience. If you don’t have any comparable rivals, investigate indirect ones instead. Make a note of:
- The tone of voice and language used
- Engagement on posts
- Which sort of content is doing well
- On which platforms are their audience engaged
You should also aim to uncover any overriding interests or causes among these social audiences. For example, those engaging with eco-friendly clothing brands may share a passion for the reduction of plastic or fairtrade cotton. These topics can inform your content plan.
Offer true value
Why do people follow brands on social media? And what does true value mean to your audience? People follow accounts because they believe there is something of value offered, and that value means a tangible benefit that users will be able to make use of in the future. It could be discounts, information on products or services, or even for entertainment or inspiration – the value varies. To generate followers and, more importantly, engagement, you must offer something of real value to them.
You exist to solve a problem, and this solution is valuable to your audience. So, depending on what you have to offer, your posts may contain a mix of:
- Information and know-how on the services
- Answering customer FAQs
- Interesting or entertaining content about your day-to-day
- Offers and discounts
- Competitions
- Attractive images
- Images of labels and packaging for product launches or to increase sales
- Audience participation like polls or hashtags
As well as providing content that is interesting and not 100% sales-focused, your social media should serve as a platform for you to talk to your audience and vice versa.
Keep it consistent
Consistency is key when it comes to building trust and engagement among your users and attracting new followers. This is because consistency is a demonstration of how genuine your business is. It shows that you are firm with your values and your service offering.
If your social media posts are all of the same quality levels, users are more likely to follow as they know what they will be getting. To ensure your posts are consistent without becoming repetitive, consider the following:
- Make a toolkit or series of templates for different subjects, for example, news, competitions, company updates and promo posts.
- Ensure the same quality and style of imagery on all posts.
- Stick to one or two fonts.
- Ensure your tone of voice is consistent and matches the brand
- Stick to a concise yet informative number of words.
- Keep a regular posting schedule but be open to experimenting to find key days and times with higher engagement.
If you have any personal social media accounts, it’s good to explore the content structure of brands or influencers you follow. Do they randomly change topics and image styles from post to post? Or do they present a cohesive series of posts? Your feed can’t be everything to everyone, and quality over quantity is key. So, focus on providing specific content relevant to your area of expertise.
Get your audience involved
What better way to increase engagement than to encourage it directly? This is a great way to get your existing audience involved and extend your organic reach. Plus, users that contribute to a post are more likely to share it among their followers. These post types include:
- Competitions and giveaways – asking users to repost or comment on an image to win a prize, discount, or feature.
- Q&As and quizzes – creating quizzes about your products or related topics and asking users to share their results.
- Opinion polls – asking users to share their opinions on a relevant topic.
- Tag for feature – encouraging users to share a hashtag about your product in return for being featured.
Audience participation-style posts can also help create user-generated content. And this content can then be reposted by your business.
Once your audience sees that your brand is open and receptive to their opinions, they are more likely to share them – helping to increase your engagement rates.
Experiment with different formats
Most social media users have different preferences for posting formats. For example, members of the younger generations favor bite-sized content or short-form videos. So, if you’re posting only text and photos, try experimenting with other formats on different platforms to see if your engagement increases.
Some algorithms on social media sites, notably Facebook, aim to deliver varied types of content to users to keep things fresh. So, if you’re sticking to the same post style, it could be limiting your reach.
If you’re lacking inspiration for videos, consider planning extra post types to support them, such as:
- Live Q&A’s
- Before and after transformations
- How to’s & demonstrations
- Product unboxing
If you experiment with different types of content, especially videos, don’t forget to make it accessible for all users. Include captions on all videos (whether short-form or long-form) and add alt text to images.
With a few tools, tips, and tricks under your belt, you’ll have your small business’s social media booming in no time at all – so what will you experiment with first?