How to Increase Your Social Media Engagement

There’s no escaping it – as a society, social media is an integral part of our day to day lives. The average person now spends nearly two hours a day on social channels, making up 30% of all time spent online.

As a brand, key social channels such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook should be fundamental components of your marketing strategy. Not only do they allow you to communicate with your audience anywhere and at any time of day, but they can be key traffic drivers to your site without costing your business a single penny.

However, harnessing the powers of social media in a way that stands you out on the saturated platforms isn’t always as simple as you might think. Here are our top tips and tricks for making an impression amongst the white noise:

Re-sharing evergreen content is a great way to boost your engagement. Some high-performing and high-engagement content never goes out of style, so squeeze as much out of this as you can without flogging a dead horse (as long as it’s relevant to your brand of course).

You may be safely tucked away behind a screen, but our 21^st century social media users are much more intuitive than you might give them credit for. People can easily spot a ‘fraud’ on social media, so adopt an authentic, natural yet upbeat tone with your social channels as your audience will react much more positively to this.

First impressions count. And what is the most prominent thing people see when they first land on your social feeds? – The images. Make sure that the pictures you use on your feeds are professional quality, brand specific, well edited and not overcrowded.

Customers will always have questions about a product, especially if they can’t physically see and touch it. Ask yourself if you are giving your customers enough information about the products on your product page – is it clear what size the item is, how it will fit? What about the rest of the process e.g. can they return the item, do you give refunds or exchange only? Make sure the information is clearly displayed on the website and for those questions that you haven’t anticipated (there are always a few…), make sure you have clearly visible contact details. A few inquisitive customers may bring something to your attention, or multiple repeat requests from different customers may show a gap in information – if you don’t want to keep supplying the same answers, consider an FAQ page.

If you don’t provide customers with sufficient information to feel secure in their purchase, then they will bounce of the site and onto another retailer that does.

and last but not least…

Research published in the Social Intelligence Report states that the most likes, shares and comments occur on Fridays.

To break this down further:

• 17% of all comments occur on Fridays.
• 16% of likes occur on Fridays.
• 16% of shares occur on Fridays.
• Sunday is the least likely day to receive a comment on a post

Bear this in mind and save your best, most favoured content and post this in line with these statistics in order to generate optimal results from these.

The success that hashtags found on Twitter led this to spread to Facebook, Instagram and even Google+. Tweets with relevant hashtags can get double the engagement of tweets without them and are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted, so get thinking up some relevant hashtags and try these out until you find your perfect combination for social media dominance.

Your audience doesn’t follow you purely to hear about the same products 24/7. In fact it can put people off following you all together. Take your social media stage as an opportunity to showcase your brand and discuss your industry in all ways possible – demonstrate your staff, exhibit your expertise in your field, and show that there are people behind the accounts.  

Interested in more about social media?

• THE ART OF INSTAGRAM
• TECH INSIGHT: DOES SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT SEO RANKING?