Social media plays an important role in your marketing plan. It’s a quick, easy and instant way for you to interact with your audience. And an opportunity for your audience to engage with you whenever and wherever they like. Engaging with your customers and growing a social media following should be a priority. It’s likely that almost, if not, all, of your customers use social media in one way or another. It may be trial and error to gauge where your target audience hangs out, but once you’ve figured that out, you can utilise social media to drive email sign-ups, web visits and sales.
How to be successful at social
Before you start selling to your customers you need to befriend them and build a bond of trust. This means being a social butterfly, posting social media posts on the platforms that work for you and regularly interacting with your audience. In addition to posting engaging content it’s almost as important to ensure you respond promptly and politely to any customer enquiries or comments. You should aim to quickly resolve any issues and enthuse about any positive feedback. Testimonials from happy customers make great examples of engaging content so jump on these types of opportunity to show what a great customer experience you offer. Avoid hard sales or competitor put downs – it’s only likely to turn people off.
How do I get started with social media?
Luckily we have lots of guides to getting started on social media. If you’re new to social you can pick up lots of hints and tips really easily by reading our advice including 5 Ways to Maximise Your Social Media Schedule or Social Media Myths for Small Businesses. If you’ve been using social media for a while but are stuck in a rut, 8 Social Media Ideas to Rejuvenate Your Online Presence is a really helpful read to change things up.
Why aren’t people engaging with my posts?
Let’s assume by now you are already using social media for your business and have a fairly good understanding of how it works. But you’re not quite getting the results you were looking for in terms of followers, comments or conversions. What you’re looking for is a fail safe way to gain more readers and signpost them to your latest product or service. Let’s firstly look at some of the reasons why you’re maybe not getting the interactions you deserve.
- Problem: Are you posting too frequently? Bombarding your followers with content may be too much for them and your brand message may be getting lost. Conversely, you may not be posting enough and your followers aren’t even seeing your posts.
- Solution: Post to a regular schedule and tell your followers when this will be in social posts and bios so they know when to expect new content. This means you are building up your reliability and your followers can seek out information from you because they know that content will be there. Create consistent quality content (tips below).
- Problem: Social algorithms mean you’re not getting seen. This is a common issues now as social media platforms are favouring more popular followers or trending posts over everyday content. They also tend to show posts of the people that a user most interacts with so you’ll need to hook them into connecting with you regularly to keep showing up in their feed.
- Solution: Follow your followers and look at the types of content they are interacting with the most. Analyse what it is that’s so engaging so you can recreate these elements within your own posts. Also, interacting directly with followers by leaving comments on their posts will remind them that you exist.
- Problem: Are you posting for the wrong audience? Are you being honest with yourself about the demographics of your consumers? If you’re creating posts that dazzle with bold neon graphics and country & western quotes, but you’re selling new born baby clothes – your messaging and your target demographics may be getting lost in the mix.
- Solution: Look at your social media and website analytics to determine who your customers are. It’s fine to inject personality in your posts but ensuring you’re including what your customers want and expect is the key to creating a larger following and more sales.
How do I create engaging social media posts?
Engaging social media posts are those which create interactions, such as followers leaving comments or following a call to action within the post such as clicking a link. An engaging post is also one that creates a connection between the reader and the brand. It may make the audience want to like or follow the post, research more about the company in question or even make a direct purchase.
Your content can vary in terms of video, audio or text. It can include polls, surveys or competitions. Social media posts should definitely show personality, be creative and be trustworthy. But mostly content should be relevant and helpful to the reader. Here are some tips to optimise your content for maximum engagement:
- Use images and high quality photos within your social posts. Images get many more interactions than text alone.
- Use infographics to showcase information and facts in an exciting way whilst still being visual. Everyone loves a Venn diagram!
- Share customer testimonials. Positive reviews and brand testimonials are excellent at providing a true insight into your business that viewers will find trustworthy.
- Use hashtags. Always. Just make sure they are relevant to your post which will make your content searchable and relevant in any results.
- Host competitions. This is an easy way to guarantee interactions. Alternatively host contests and surveys where audience members interact with polls or re-post your content to take part.
- Craft unique content for each social channel. Using a tool such as Canva to create social posts means you can use similar elements and branding on each post and across each channel, even if the content varies slightly to better fit different audiences.
Following the above tips and tricks will allow you to create engaging social media posts and establish a long-lasting relationship with your customers.
Can an agency help?
Want to work with a marketing agency that has 50+ years of experience in helping local businesses to grow, and the 5-star reviews to prove it?
As part of our all-in-one digital marketing solutions, Yell’s experts boost the visibility of your business on social media to generate awareness, interest, and leads. Interested? Get in touch with us today to discuss how we can help you!
