In 2020, engaging with your customers and followers on social media can be challenging. Followers may not always be so responsive to the content you share so it’s important to hit the nail on the head from the get-go.
Social media agencies are quick to create strategies that involve constantly posting online and running ads from time to time. But social media is so much more than that. You need to prioritize engagement and build a better relationship with your followers and any potential customers.
Tips on Engaging Social Media Followers
We’ve put together a helpful guide with tips on engaging with your followers and customers on social media.
Tip #1. Know Your Audience
It will be hard to get your followers engaged if you aren’t aware of who you’re actually talking to. The tone and language for every brand will differ as no two brands are the same. If you’re an easy-going restaurant, you wouldn’t want to engage with your followers like formal businessmen.
Tip #2. Share Content From Followers
There’s nothing better than having a big brand notice your work! Sharing your followers’ work, whether it’s art or just a screenshot of a joke they’ve made while interacting with you, it really shows your audience that you care and value them and that this is not just a business relationship. This also helps in keeping your feeds diverse and relevant from your competitors and makes you stand out in the industry.
Tip #3. Stay Topical and Trendy
Trending news on pop culture, memes or even big sporting events are all fun and topical things you can talk about on social media. This is useful for those days where you just aren’t sure what to share online or if you don’t think your regular content is interesting anymore.
Staying up to date with trends also shows your followers that you’re in the loop with current news. Using real-time news will help you start an interesting conversation with audiences, adding newer and exciting content to your feeds.
Tip #4. Incentivize Followers
Contests, quizzes and games are fun ways to engage with followers, even in 2020. Everyone likes a prize or something that’s free! If you offer these to your followers, there’s a higher chance that they will actually engage with you. Whatever you’re giving away doesn’t have to be huge. A small gift of even a discount on your products is enough to roll in the engagement.
Tip #5. Make Use of Visuals
Videos, to this day, are still an engaging form of content. Along with GIFs, emojis and images, multimedia make a great addition to social media posts and content generally. It’s more inviting and attracts all types of users online. With more engagement, your visibility increases as well!
Videos and images are a great way to let your followers take a break from reading long forms of content, while emojis show your followers that you’re laid back and easy going.
Tip #6. Run Polls and Surveys
Besides using videos and photos, polls and surveys are also an interesting way of engaging with your followers. Most of the time, polls are made to obtain customer feedback quickly. But in the age of Twitter, many brands will use Twitter polls simply to get to know their followers better.
As with all social media posts, make sure you post your poll or survey at the optimal time so that your target audience has a better chance of actually seeing it and engaging!
Tip #7. Personalize Every Conversation
While responding to every comment or message is vital, using a standard message template does not cut it these days. If you use the same generic response to everyone, your followers may view you as robotic.
Where you can, respond using their first names. Show them that you care about their feedback and issues by addressing their comments directly. Always use a friendly tone of voice so that you don’t intimidate them or scare them away.
Tip #8. Tug at Emotions
Using emotional headlines when creating articles, or even creating emotional captions, increases the chances of your post being shared. The title or caption that you use is ultimately the deciding factor to whether or not your followers read your content, or even buys your product. It’s vital that you put in extra effort when creating content, especially your opening titles or sentences.
Tip #9. Increase Posting Frequency
While you should be posting on social media more often, don’t forget to prioritize quality over quantity! If you post 20 times a day, but your audience can’t connect with your content, your efforts have gone to waste.
Instead, it’s key to focus on quality over quantity! You could post 50 times a day, but if the content shared does not connect with the audience, and they’re not engaging, the posts will become forgotten.
That’s not to say that you should be posting every minute – you don’t want to be spamming your followers with posts. Keep your profile up to date so that followers and new customers know that you’re still active.
Tip #10. Benchmark Against Competitors
Look at the competitors in your industry. What platforms are they using? What are they sharing online?
This is a great way to stay on top of trends as well, especially within your own industry. If you notice that followers are more engaging on specific platforms, consider growing your profile on that platform more. Focus on individual marketing strategies for each platform so that you keep content fresh and exciting.
Are your competitors posting viral videos and memes and gaining popularity? Maybe that’s something you need to consider as well! Social media users love to laugh and what better way to do so than by looking at viral content about your industry?
Tip #11. Host Live Q&A Sessions
Start an online dialogue with your followers by hosting Q&A sessions on social media. Twitter and Facebook offer great live-streaming features that enable you to do so. This will give you the perfect opportunity to engage with your followers, and potential customers, by sharing knowledge on your industry and giving them a closer look into what you do.
You can ask your followers to send questions for you to answer or they can send in feedback that they would like you to address. You can also encourage your followers to suggest new ideas or products that they would like to see from you.
Hosting a live session on social media will help humanize your brand. It lets your customers see the real you, rather than constantly only seeing messages online. Showing the faces to your brand is so important, especially in 2020.
Tip #12. Share Blog Content
Blog content shared on social media is also a great way of increasing your engagement online – not to mention it’s refreshing! Remember to feature blogs on topics that are important and relevant so that your audience feels inclined to actually read them. Use concise captions that share your blog topics with your followers without giving away too much information.
If you’re stuck on blog topics to write about, you can share business tips that may be of interest to your followers. Social media advertising tips are also a popular topic online!
Tip #13. Ask for Feedback
Asking for feedback is an effective way of getting your followers to engage with you directly. Ask them to share their opinions and any feedback they may have to offer. Most of the time, users are happy to talk about products that they like and even those they feel may need improvement.
You can either start a thread on your social media profiles or ask users to leave reviews on your website or Facebook page. When customers leave positive reviews, this would be helpful for those users who are still considering purchasing your products.
Of course, there is the possibility of receiving negative reviews. Combat this by responding to any negativity promptly and politely. This shows your followers and customers that you do care about their experiences and want to improve your services. However, try not to send the same response to every user that leaves a review. Tailor each response to directly address the review at hand and do your best to let them know that you care about their opinions.
How do you engage with your followers on Social Media
We have share with you our top tips on Social Media Engagement, you should now know about some of the best ways to get social media users buzzing about your brand.
I would also love to learn from you. How do you engage with your followers? What tips do you have for those who want to minimize the time it takes to engage with their followers?
About the Author!
Umer Bilal is an Internet Marketer at Grafdom.com – a website development, Web design, social media organization based In UAE, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and around the middle east areas. The agency designs dynamic websites, manages viral marketing campaigns, develops mobile apps & provides robust hosting solutions for some of the most recognized brands.
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