3 Necessary Tips to Effectively Increase Your Social Media Engagement

These tips can help develop and improve your social media outreach

In 2016, it is estimated that there will be around 2.13 billion social network users around the globe, up from 1.4 billion in 2012.

Social network saturation worldwide is progressively increasing every year.

“In 2012, 63.1 percent of internet users were also social network users and these figures are expected to grow. Social networking is one of the most popular online activities with high user engagement rates and expanding mobile possibilities. Overall, US users spent more than 121.8 billion monthly minutes on social media. Social networks not only enable users to communicate beyond local or social boundaries, but also offer possibilities to share user-generated content like photos and videos and features such as social games.”  - Number of worldwide social network users 2010-2018 | Statistic. (n.d.).

While creating quality content is at the top of the importance scale, engaging your audience comes in at a close second. However obvious this may seem, it can still pose a problem if you don’t know what you are doing and you don’t have the right tools.

Use Social Media Monitoring Tools

With the surge of online traffic over the last decade, it is crucial to the success of your business to drive your online reputation and brand, especially in the social media arena. It also helps to have your ear to the ground to know what and how your competitors’ are doing as well. So how can you monitor your social media activity, check out your competitors’ social media activity and run your business at the same time?

Here are some tools that will help you keep tabs on your social media activity and your competitors:

• Google Alerts - You want to be on top of what is being talked about on social media in your business field, about your products and services or about your competition. You can monitor social media comments with this handy tool from Google.
• Hootsuite – Manage social networks, schedule messages, engage your audiences, 
  and measure your return on investment (ROI) all from one spot.
• TweetDeck – This tool gives you a simple way to not only monitor for your business, but you can distribute the information found and share it with your team.
• Social Mention – A tool that allows you to track and measure, in real time, what people are saying about you, your business, a new product or service or any other topic that crosses the social media landscape. Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Google, YouTube, Digg and many more.
• AgoraPulse - Delivers a free tool called the AgoraPulse Barometer, which performs an analysis of your Facebook page and compares it alongside other businesses’ pages that have a comparable number of fans.
• Fanpage Karma - Is a paid tool that offers a free version which allows you to do a reasonably detailed analysis of your Facebook page and a comparison with your business’s competitors.
• LikeAlyzer - Gives you a rating out of 100 in comparison to other Facebook pages then provides you with some recommendations on how you can improve your own page.
• Simply Measured - Is a pretty powerful reporting tool that offers a wide range of analytic reports for Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks. This is a paid service but will provide access to a set of free reports for consideration.
• CScore - Is a free analytic tool that does a breakdown of your Facebook page and then categorizes and scores it based on the behavior of your page.

Visibility is Everything 

Visual content and social media are like peanut butter and jelly, the use of graphics or video can definitely benefit your social media standing. The images you post on social media can help you reach your ideal community by visually conveying a message. In a research study posted on eMarketer, “it was discovered that image results caused an 85% interaction rate on Facebook and increased retweets and favorites on Twitter by 35%”.

There are numerous creative options for adding graphics to your social media account while not breaking the bank. Here are just a few:

• A staged shot of a new product or service
• Showcasing new staff members or employees of the month
• Photos of the past or as the business was growing
• Requesting followers add images of your services
• Create a collage from an industry event

Don’t Forget the Contests and Giveaways

It is proof positive that a good old-fashioned contest or giveaway will always draw people in, just look at the infamous “Publisher’s Clearinghouse” contest. The great thing about holding a contest or giveaway is that it boosts engagement on the social media platform and people enjoy winning prizes and gaining a little recognition.

Recycle That Content 

There are tons of social media networks out there and they all have different features and serve different demographics. So why not repurpose your content to suit the different audiences on each of your social media platforms.

For instance, creating a bulleted how-to-list for your Facebook page then adding a few relevant background icons and converting it into an image for Pinterest. Or, you could update and republish one of your best blog posts or articles. The concept being that you can incorporate one element into several different elements in order to reach your different target audiences across the various mediums.

Social media can be an extremely powerful tool when used to engage your current followers and attract new followers and with the numerous social networking tools available there are endless possibilities to what you can do with that power.

Want to maximize your digital marketing strategy?

With years of creative, technical and marketing expertise, our team can help you reach your marketing and design goals with options you probably didn’t even know existed. We offer services in Seattle, Redmond, Bellevue and Tacoma, Washington. Call us at 206-384-4909 or use our online contact form to arrange for a free consultation