Social Media Engagement Strategies to Consider

Now-a-days, social media is more prevalent than ever, especially these past couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. People have turned to Facebook, Instagram, and the likes (no pun intended) to communicate with loved ones and maintain something of a social life.
 

Businesses are also relying on social media for marketing and various other business practices. Social media has become a catalyst for expansion, growth, and fostering a more positive brand reputation, which in turn has the power to increase sales and revenue. Social media is not just about popularity, it's about building meaningful relationships with current and prospective customers, which will boost your brand and your return-on investment.

What is Social Media Engagement?

Social media engagement consists of measuring comments, likes, and shares. Having a lot of "followers" or "fans" is a good indicator that your page is doing well, but it's not the best measure of social media success. You want an engaged audience, not just a large one. Quality over quantity.

Activity and engagement is vital for every social platform, as it helps build a positive experience, develop relationships, and attract new and potential future customers 
 

Social media engagement is measured by a range of metrics such as: 

• Shares or retweets 
• Comments 
• Likes 
• Followers/ and audience growth 
• Click-through rate 
• Mentions (tagged and untagged) 
• Branded hashtags 

You need to have a good idea with where you're currently at and where you're heading to be able to accurately measure growth. Start off by jotting down your current number of followers, average comments and shares per post, and whatever other metrics are useful to you.

Once you've done so, track performance regularly so that you can spot jumps and dips in engagement to better understand which strategies are working and which ones aren't. Start off by identifying your strategy, there is no one-size-fits-all solution., Every business and every person has different goals and objectives, so your social media strategy should reflect this. Taco Bell and Michael Kors are going to have very different techniques for marketing their brands and engaging consumers, which will influence what content they create. Taco Bell wants to create a fun, approachable brand voice, while Michael Kors wants to engage with an upper-class market.

Know

You can’t engage people if you don’t know who you’re talking to.  

Being mindful of the language, tone, values, and interests that resonate with people are going to be vastly different for a sports brand than a jewelry one.  

Conducting audience research is vital so that you can better understand your target market. This will help determine.

• What social media sites to use
• What to publish
• When to publish
• Brand voice
   

Connect 

Once you have a better understanding of who is looking at your content and the message you want to share, you need to figure out what it is you want to say. 

The goal is to connect with your audience, not just broadcast information. You want to address their questions, concerns, needs, and pain points. If you're posting as a business, talking about how great your brand is or pushing your sales will only get you so far. If you're posting from a personal account, it's still important to post and share things that followers will find valuable. Sometimes, it takes getting creative to intrigue people enough to get them to listen to your message.
 

Some ideas for posts include:

• Polls 
• Contests 
• FAQ sessions 
• Customer stickers/filters
• Fun quizzes
   

Converse

Conversation is not an art, but rather a sport where you must volley attention and questions back and forth -it needs to be a give and take for you and your audience - This means that you need to spark up conversations with people talking about you, your brand, or something that relates to either, even if those people aren't necessarily talking to you. You'll want to make sure you're responding to direct messages, incoming messages, and comments.
 

Be Intentional 

Whether you’re a business or a person, it’s essential for you to be intentional about what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, and what you hope to accomplish.

First and foremost, it's important to show your human side. Even if it's a business you're managing social media for, showcase that there's a human behind the computer screen. People don't want to converse with a robot. Make jokes, demonstrate warmth, and share photos and videos of yourself and your team. All of this can help you to develop a strong rapport with your audience.

Second, be time efficient. The quicker you respond to people, and the more helpful you are, the more likely you are to leave a positive influence on the people you're speaking with. If you're managing a company's social media, this increases the likelihood of getting a high-ranking customer satisfaction score.

Finally, schedule out your posts to ensure you're posting and sharing content daily, ideally one to three times per day. You'll also want to be mindful of what time you're posting to ensure you're getting maximum exposure. Keeping content interesting and fresh is vital, as this will increase the likelihood that people will come back for more.

 

At Optimum, we want to make sure you’re getting the most from our services!. Having a reliable Internet connection is a big first step towards successfully building up your personal or corporate brand via social media. By utilizing technology and social media platforms more efficiently, you can successfully improve your business’ exposure and revenue, or you can better connect with the people in your life through purposeful social media engagement strategies, authenticity, and some give-and-take.