We all want it. We all need it to help our social media posts get more visibility. We should all encourage it to please the algorithm robots. I’m talking about engagement – and in this blog I’m going to explain how to increase engagement on social media posts.
Firstly, let me tell you what I mean by engagement. This is any form of interaction; it can be someone clicking ‘see more’, liking, sharing or commenting. Remember, the comments are like gold and will massively improve your post’s reach the more engagement you get.
Why are social media comments so beneficial?
When you’re chilling and scrolling through your personal accounts’ newsfeed, you’ll come across comments that your friends have made on other business’s social media posts. This is what happens when someone comments on one of your business posts – they reach more people – people who don’t currently follow you.
There’s more to social media success than just posting
Publishing a post is just one element of social media marketing. You need to think of ways to build a community and learn how to start conversations using social media posts to get that all-important engagement. It’s not all about the post itself, it’s what happens to it once it starts to appear in newsfeeds.
Simple steps to achieve better social media engagement
1. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Before you put fingers to keyboard and create a post, pause for a bit, and really think about the things that your customers want to hear or learn. This probably isn’t the same as the things you’re itching to tell them about your product or service.
Focus on the benefits and remember, your customers will be thinking ‘what’s in it for me’. Writing a sales post won’t hit the spot – not every time anyway.
Amanda Bate from Redwood Copy told me this story about a company that sold men’s shirts.
The company we talked about created social media posts targeted at men, after all, they sell men’s shirts. After a while they realised that they just weren’t getting any engagement on their social media posts. The problem was that they weren’t talking to the customer – in this case, their customers were mainly women buying shirts for the men in their lives. They reviewed their content and started created posts that talked to women looking to treat their partners, dads, sons, etc. and they had lift off!
The morale of this story is never assume who your customer is. This company mistook the end user as the customer. You can read the full blog here.
2. Don’t use jargon on your social media posts! You’ll resonate more when you speak in the same language as your customers. You may have fancy technical names for things in your sector, but your customers may not understand them.
Speaking with Angie Stewart, from Digital Coach for Coaches, on a recent livestream revealed the importance of talking in the customers’ language. Angie talked about working with a guitar teacher who used the hashtag #guitarteacher but failed to get much engagement. After research it was identified that his potential customers were searching for the hashtag #guitarlessons.
Just a quick revision of his future posts made all the difference and now he’s experiencing lots of enquiries through social media.
3. Use unedited photos to stop people from scrolling. Even the most beautifully designed graphics don’t always hit the spot on social media. In fact, the more precisely designed ones are the ones that people scroll past the most as they send a message that it’s a business wanting to sell something.
Instead of spending lots of money and time on graphics, use photographs that resonate. Use images of the things that go on behind the scenes and the people who make up your brand. These are the images that customers are interested in on social media. Be a bit more spontaneous!
Or try designing a simple infographic that educates. These work really well, who doesn’t want to learn something new every day?
4. Encourage social media engagement and start a conversation.
To do this you need to think about the challenges your customers face, consider what they love doing, and explore the things they like to talk about.
Then ask questions, share advice and information based on what resonates with your target audience.
To explain this further, here’s a simple example. Imagine you’re selling a useful weeding kneeling tool that also doubles up as a garden stool when it’s unfolded. Two amazing products in one!
Now you could talk about the mechanics of the chair, the quality of the materials used, how it’s been manufactured etc. But really, is anyone interested in this? Customers expect the goods that they buy to be good quality so really telling them this is just a waste of words.
Or, you could encourage engagement with social media posts that start with:
- Do your knees ache after weeding?
- Imagine doing the weeding whilst sitting down on a padded stool.
- Give us a thumbs up if you find weeding hard on the back.
- What’s the one thing you’d love to have in your garden to help with maintenance?
- What’s the worst thing about keeping your garden looking beautiful?
Here, you’ll be able to get into the minds of your customers and respond to their comments. This is an opportunity, not to sell, but to offer help by asking them to take a look at a product that will benefit them.
Using social media this way attracts people who didn’t even realise that they needed your product. Brilliant!
And don’t forget to use an image that portrays the lifestyle that your ideal customer is after in this case a beautiful garden to relax in.
5. Tag someone into your social media post.
If you’re lucky enough to be tagged into someone’s post its usually because you’ve done something worthy of recognition.You’ll get a notification to say you’ve been tagged into a post, and you’re bound to take a look to see what someone has written about you. Naturally, you’ll like the post, share it and make a comment.Therefore by tagging someone into your social media posts, you’ll be encouraging engagement from the start.
6. Respond to comments. When someone has taken the time to leave a comment, it’s courteous to acknowledge it with a response or a simple like. The commenter will appreciate this PLUS you’ll be doubling the level of engagement. If you can respond to the comment with a question and keep the conversation flowing even better!
- Don’t use the more popular ones like #FridayFeelings or #WisdomWednesday as these won’t be the ones your customers will use to find you. Plus, your post will only drown in the millions of other tweets that contain the same hashtag.
- Make your hashtag relevant. For example, if I was to do a tweet to encourage my potential customers to read this blog, I’d use the hashtag #TwitterTips as this is exactly what they’re looking for.
- Do your research and when you’ve found the perfect hashtag for your tweet, pop it in your search bar and see what else comes up. Every now and then, we can fall foul when a hashtag has another meaning. Just be careful!
- If you’re holding an event, you can create a unique hashtag (again do you research to make sure it is unique). This will allow everyone who is interested to follow this particular hashtag and be a part of the community and conversation.
Your followers will appreciate some light-heartedness too
Businesses that weave in some light-heartedness into their social media strategy win the hearts of their customers. Let’s face it we all like to relax, be entertained and find out new things when we’re scrolling on our phones.
My social media wall planner will give you an idea for a post every single day of the year. It will show you all the celebratory and awareness days and leave you space to put your own anniversaries, launch dates, etc, in too.
Chose the ones that reflect your values such as Plastic Free July and the days that your customers will enjoy.
At £12.99 it really will reduce your thinking time! And when you purchase one, as a special thank you, you will be given the option to buy my popular Social Media Content Planning Tool 2022 for half price.
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Bye for now,
Becs
