Social media engagement is an important metric to consider when building an online store. While most want to increase the size of their audience, they often fail to increase their social media engagement as well. When you engage with your followers on social media you can turn them from fans into customers. The time you devote to building relationships with your audience can lead to a higher number of sales, an increase in customer loyalty, and higher positive reviews. In this blog, you’ll learn the importance of social media engagement, how to grow your followers, how to increase social media engagement and more.
Make your channels mobile-friendly
With most people using social media on their mobile devices it is crucial that the content you create and share is mobile friendly and easy to navigate. As mentioned above, our attention span is very short on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, making it even more important that the layout of your page is as clear as possible so users can understand what you’re about instantly.
Including key information about your company clearly on your social channels is what will see your business grow. For example, a link back to your company website, along with a short summary and contact information is also pivotal in generating new customers from social media.
Post content at the appropriate time
The time when you post a new update can have a huge influence on its success. If you post at the right time, more people will see it – and therefore, you will get more traffic and more engagement.
Unfortunately, there is no right time there works for everybody across all social networks. And one of the main characteristics of social networks is that they have no geographical barriers, meaning that you can have fans and followers everywhere in the world.
Although there are different studies that show when people are most active on the different social networks, the best way to find out the best hours to post updates is by trial and error. Try posting at different times during the day and night and see at what times you get the most engagement and clicks. You can then use scheduling tools to schedule your updates so that they go at those exact times, even if you are not available
Make content that looks good when shared on social media
There’s the next step beyond just buttons that let users share your content. You have to also make sure the content will look good once a user tries to share it.
Have you ever gone to share something on Facebook, only to find that the thumbnail or title was missing? Chances are you probably stopped in your tracks and didn’t share it.
That’s why, as a digital marketer, it’s essential that you take the time to make sure when someone attempts to share your content, it looks like it’s supposed to. Mark up the Open Graph tags with a super-clickable headline and attention-grabbing image that fits the proper dimensions of each network.
Take help of influencers
One of the best strategies used to build a blog audience is interviewing influencers. Every niche has its own experts. If you can interview these experts, get their feedback on one issue, and then publish a giant blog post with their opinions, you’ll get more social shares than ever before.
These are the steps you need to follow:
- Create a list of over 100 experts in your space. Not everyone will participate, but your goal should be to get at least 50 people to accept.
- Come up with a question to ask these experts. Each expert should receive the same question.
- Email 10 experts asking them if they would like to participate in a group roundup. Make sure you give them a deadline for their responses. Let them know that you will link to their websites.
- After you have a few experts who are on board, email the rest. When emailing the rest of the group, make sure you mention the names of the people who are already planning on participating. This will help increase your response rate.
- Once you’ve published your post, make sure you email all of the participants asking them to share the post on the major social networks. Make it easy for them by giving them suggestions on what to tweet or share on Facebook.
That’s all it takes to leverage influencers. It’s not rocket science. It’s just time-consuming.
Create viral content
The term “viral” is pretty much related to social media. Anything you find unique, enticing or relatable has the potential to drive more traffic. Viral contents are quintessential if you want to increase your site traffic. However, it is not an easy deal at all. Remember, not all your posts can be viral. For content to be viral, it is essential that:
- People have a willingness to share your content
- People spread your message to reach the maximum audience
We all dig into content that contains humour or hilarious memes. All of us are enjoying them and welcoming them. Some are funny videos, gifs, or images with secure messages or funny captions. You can easily incorporate these memes to your brands or products. Make sure you use it for fun and publicity. Stay away from any sensitive issues that may get in the way of your brand identity or that may stir controversy.
Enhance SEO
While you want it to be easy for readers to share your content, you also need to ensure your content is being shared correctly and effectively. Digital marketing has grown immensely, which means at some point you have to consider upping your search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.
In the most basic terms, integrating SEO best practices into your content can help you:
- Improve online visibility
- Generate more sales/leads
- Strengthen your brand’s authority and domain
- Connect with your direct audience
- Increase your social media traffic
If you’re looking to bolster your social traffic, optimizing content for search engines like Google and Bing can have tremendous payoffs. According to a 2014 Advanced Web Ranking report, data showed that on average, nearly 72% of searches lead to a page one click.
That number drops significantly when you talk about ranking on page two or three. AWR data showed on average, page two and three garners less than 6% of organic clicks.
You’re not only helping your website traffic with SEO improvements, but you’re also increasing buyer persuasion with better ranking. A global study found 89% of people looking to purchase an item turn to search results to make their buying decision.
Post a proper balance of promotional/valuable content
This one is tough because you immediately want to promote your product or service on social media. But you can’t always think about yourself when it comes to these things.
Users expect to find content that’s useful to them, as well. Sharing valuable content (how-to guides, articles, new posts, etc.) grows a user’s trust in your brand. They come to know you as an authority in the industry and will therefore trust you when you recommend a product or service.
The rule to master here is the 80/20 balance. 80% of your content should be useful and helpful, while 20% can promote your brand or its products. That 80% will bring new followers and build trust, they’ll then see 20% and buy into what you’re selling. Don’t forget that this variety should also include a mixture of videos, images, and other engaging content types.
Create personal accounts
Brands and businesses are not always the most inspiring channels to follow. Lots of people do not want to follow a corporate account. They want to follow real people. Instead of focusing on your corporate Facebook page, you could also focus on spreading the word on the personal Facebook pages of colleagues and employees. Of course, they’ll have to be up for that. And, you should make sure that these personal Facebook pages keep their character.
These are a few handy tactics that you can immediately start on, to deal with a decline in your social media traffic. Working on these aspects of social media marketing, also means you are inadvertently helping promote your business on social media. Good content strategy and a well-executed social media marketing plan will also help drive traffic to your website.
No matter what kind of content you’re pushing out, you’ll have no trouble finding established best practices for attracting customers. But what makes all the difference is how well you communicate with your audience. To learn more about how to successfully communicate with your audience, visit us at https://www.koffeetech.com/.
