Social media is the technology based tool that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, information and business by building virtual networks and communities through computers or other devices. Social media is internet-based and gives the user a quick electronic content as soon as he searches. Content could be anything including personal information, documents, videos or photos.
Basically, it originated as a way to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by businesses to take advantage of this by reaching out to potential customers. The power of social media has a global reach which changes and evolves web-based platforms from time to time.
Social media has many forms of a variety of tech-enabled activities. These activities include blogging, social gaming, social networks, video-photo sharing, business networks, virtual conferences, selling of the product and much more. Even governmental organizations and politicians utilize social media to engage with constituents and voters.
Social media is an indispensable tool for businesses. Social media marketing is a powerful way for all sizes of businesses to reach customers. Companies use this platform to find and engage them, drive sales through advertising and promotional strategies, figure out latest trends and offer customer services or support. Customers can interact with brands directly through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Social media can bring remarkable success by creating devoted brand advocates and even driving leads and sales.
Most brands understand how important it is to be on social media but many underestimate the value of engagement. It is an important metric to consider when building an online store. Most of the businesses want to increase the size of their audience directly but then often fail to increase their social media activity. When you boost up activities, social media turns people from fans into customers. The time when one starts devoting to build relationships with audiences, this can lead to a higher number of sales, increase in customer loyalty and higher positive reviews. When the customers engage with brands, post or send a message on social media, the company is presented with an opportunity to get to know their customers and build a relationship with them. This develops a trust and concern with the customers and builds a relationship, offering them a kind of experience, which in return increases loyalty.
Here are few suggestions to how to boost social media activities :
1. Try incorporating images in your posts
One of the most powerful tools is by using images to help you increase social media activities. By incorporating visual content, the engagement rate increases. Pictures draw the chances that people will absorb and interact with your social media posts on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Your brand has a wide variety of choices to increase social media engagement through visual content. Images of people using and enjoying your products is always attractive. You can also share images of new items that you have for sale or launch. Look at stock photos if you wish to share with short textual messages.
You can also use frames, filters and other features relating the brand or product to draw attention to your posts. This blends in users and are more likely to register as wanted content rather than intrusive marketing.
2. Make it funny
If it is appropriate for your brand, incorporate humor and personality into your social media posts. Often, it can be hard to break through the social media noise to get people’s attention. Even social media users who follow your brand are likely to scroll stories that are overly promotional in nature. This is not surprising. After all, they have no personal reason to be invested in your brand’s development or success.
3. Ask for feedback and reviews
You can ask the customers to leave their reviews and feedback as comments, review or rate the page. This could be really helpful if your review page on Facebook is somewhat sparse. Reviewers provide valuable information for those who have not yet decided whether or not they wish to use your product or service.
4. Prompt the reactions you want with emojis
One of the things we always need to be cautious about when we post online is that textual communication doesn’t come with clear indications of tone.
Keep sharing a content that is funny and comedy on the page, for instance, a laughing emoji can set the stage for the humorous reaction you are looking for. Many apps allow you to create a list of frequently-used emojis to make it quicker and easier to find your favorites.
5. Share a surprising statistic
The best way to get someone’s attention is to share a fact or any statistical data that people did not know about before as people usually take social media to be entertained only.
The best facts are the ones that can be summed up in brief sentences and can collate facts inside an image for instant visual appeal.
You can also use statistics and data to bring people to your site’s home page through links. Monitor the comments and reviews to see what people have to say and when they respond, be sure to appreciate their comments.
6. Do interactive live sessions
More and more traffic on social media sites involves videos or face to face live sessions instead of still images or texts by using improvised technology. Live video is available on a wide range of social media channels such as Instagram or Facebook. It represents one of the best tools available to increase social media activity. Usually people spend three times as much time engaging with a live video than they do with one that is prerecorded. You can show them the new item from every aspect and let viewers see it. You can also use live videos for Q&A sessions about your brand.
7. Share Content That’s Relevant to Your Audience
Who are your customers? What are their interests? What types of posts do they prefer? How do they consume information? Would they prefer videos, blog content, or image posts? Focus on creating content your customer would enjoy. You’ll likely need to experiment with different types of content to see which gets the most engagement. If you notice that videos perform well on your fan pages, then create more video content.
8. Use Attention Grabbing Words at the Beginning of a Post
Experimented with words. Notice what draws people’s attention. Figure the important words before posting such as, ‘GIVEAWAY ALERT:’ or ‘CONTEST ALERT.’
9. Run Contests and Giveaways
The easiest way to increase social media engagement is to run contests and giveaways. In this, people take certain actions such as visiting a landing page on your website, watch stories and participate. You can use tools like Raffle copter that grows your social media following and engagement as contest requirements and give a prize to a winner too.
Social Media Tools to Boost Engagement :
Buffer
Buffer is a great tool for tracking and enhancing social media engagement. This tool allows you to automate your posts at various times. Hashtags can be added to posts that are relevant to brands within Buffer. The tool allows you to add graphics and images to your post. You’ll be able to see how many likes, retweets, mentions and clicks your posts get.
Canva
Canva is another best social media tool around. It allows you to create your own unique content for each social network based on the correct dimensions. The tool acts like a version of Photoshop. One could be able to drag, drop and modify graphics. It also helps to give you a competitive advantage as people will credit you when they share your content.
IFTTT
IFTTT is also a social media tool that allows you to automate more of your business. If you post something on Facebook, it makes you set triggers so that IFTTT reposts the content on your other social media accounts. This is a great tool for solopreneurs who do not have the time to craft and automate unique content for each and every platform. By posting regularly on different social networks, you’ll likely increase social media engagement.
Sniply
Sniply is a tool that simplifies the curation of content. You can share other people’s articles for your social media account and that links back to your website. The article on page drives more traffic back. This will help you grow your followers which will indirectly help grow your social media engagement.
Working to increase social media activities is an ongoing task. Experimenting and spending some time getting to know your audience and developing strategies each day would work more. Use analytics to see what efforts get you the best results. This way, you can provide quick and friendly customer support, build affinity that helps to increase your social media engagement most dramatically to get the best out of every action you take with your brand. You might have different goals for your social media program, so how you measure your social media engagement should line up with those goals.
