5 Surefire Ways to Boost Your Social Media Engagement

Did you know a study revealed that in 2012, U.S. users spent more than 121.8 billion monthly minutes on social media? That number alone proves that social media should be part of your marketing plan!

Maybe your business already has a social media presence, or maybe yours is in its earliest stages of growth. In any case, read on to learn 5 tips to boost your social media engagement.

1. Monitor keywords and know how to contribute to the conversation

Spend time monitoring social media. What are people saying about your industry and your company? What are your competitors doing and saying? With social monitoring tools like HubSpot, you can even geo-target locations and monitor hashtags from specific areas.

Once you’ve spent time listening, know how to contribute to the conversation. Let’s say you’re a heating maintenance company on Twitter. You’ve spent time monitoring keywords and see that someone (who is not one of  your current customers) has just posted a complaint that their heater has broken down. How can you contribute to the conversation? You could: ask user to give you more specific information (if they aren’t in your service area and seem to be looking for help), give them a couple DIY tips, or, better yet, give them a link to your eBook about common heater problems and maintenance!  If they are in your service area, then you know what to do!

2. Create a voice/tone for your brand

Show off your brand’s personality! It can be easy to adopt a formal tone when responding to your customers on social media. While that’s definitely not a bad thing, have a fun and light side too. If your company has a quirky or sassy writing style on your website, mimic that on your social channels. Just make sure to always keep it professional.

3. Respond to your audience and ask open-ended questions

One of the best things you can do is to remember to ask open-ended questions that cannot be answered with a yes or no. For example, before a holiday like the Fourth of July or Labor Day, ask, “How will you be celebrating?” This type of question is great because it keeps your users engaged, since they have to think about how to respond. You could even post a picture and ask your subscribers to caption it.

Pro Tip: If you ask for something from your customers, make sure you have something in it for them. For example, send a special discount coupon code to the winner of the caption contest!

4. Use current events to stay up to date while promoting your brand

Current events and social media can work hand-in-hand.  Remember Super Bowl XLVII, when the lights went out for 30 minutes during the game? The marketing team for Oreo worked quickly and produced a memorable image, which was quickly retweeted thousands of times. Responding to current events while staying true to your brand shows your customers that you are active and engaged. They’ll probably be more likely to interact with you because of it. (On a side note: read the comments by users and responses from Oreo. These are great examples of engagement!)

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013

Another great campaign is “the Dress.” In this popular campaign, users quickly chose sides about the color of a woman’s lacy dress. Was the dress white and gold or black and blue? The Salvation Army took this debate and pushed it to the next level with this image: 

Current? Yes. Memorable? A resounding yes.

5. Show, don’t tell

Make sure that your social media content has some sort of visual element, whether it’s a picture or a video. Entice your followers to click on your content. On Facebook, posts with photos receive 53% more engagement.

Ask your customers for pictures of your product in action. Feature their photos and stories. It’s an easy and free way to increase traffic to your platform and help you continue to boost your social media engagement.

Do you have any other questions or tips of your own about engaging your audience on social media? Please share them in the comments below!