When it comes to effectively and meaningfully reaching your audience, I think it’s pretty safe to say that all marketers understand the important role social media plays in that quest. Not only does your audience seem to live on social networks—posting vacation selfies and checking into newly opened restaurants—but they also rely on social media for information and entertainment.
As a result, social media marketing has become a necessary tool for communicating with your audience. It’s all about creating a connection with your audience by encouraging them to engage with you and the quality, informative and entertaining content that you share.
The truth is, having informative and entertaining.
First of all, you’re competing hard for your audience’s attention. I mean, everyone is on social media these days. According to the Content Marketing Institute and MarketProfs 2016 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends—North America reports, 90% of B2C and 93% of B2B marketers say that social media is the most used content marketing tactic, outside of blogs. In addition, you may not have a social strategy in place or are working with limited resources, which can hinder your ability to maintain a consistent social presence.
But the good news is that there’s several things you can do to give engagement a nice little boost. And the great news is that anyone can do them—and that’s why we’re calling them hacks.
So, without further ado, here are eight easy hacks that can lend your social media marketing strategy a hand and boost audience engagement.
1. Ask interesting and creative questions to get a conversation going.
Group of People Asking Questions
One of the best ways to engage your audience, is to simply ask them to do so by posting thought provoking, interesting or creative questions. To get the best reach and to catch their eye, include a video or image with your question.
ModCloth is a popular women’s clothing brand that offers vintage-inspired clothing and accessories for every body. They do a great job of showcasing their brand, while also encouraging audience engagement through questions. This Instagram post is sweet and simple. Going up just a week ago, it already boasts over 6,700 likes and 67 comments.
2. Conduct polls.
Polls are any easy and effective way to generate engagement because they don’t require a lot of effort to participate in. They’re also a fabulous way to get new information about your audience.
You should include polls in your strategy because:
- You can get free feedback:
Brands often pay a lot of money to have outside services and companies survey customers to get product feedback. Others use social listening tools to see what people are saying about their products.
Why not be more direct and just ask the customers on a social media channel?
If a person has followed your brand on a social network, there’s a good chance that they think very highly of your brand. These are the people that are going to provide some of the most honest and lengthy feedback, and they will gladly do it for free.
Polling on social channels will improve your product and site by helping you identify shortcomings to fix.
- Help building a community:
Polling shows your customers that the communication channel isn’t a one-way street, and it invites them to join the fun.
Seeking input from the community also tells them that you are listening and that you want to make your products and websites better.
Broadcasting the results demonstrates that you want the world to know what your community thinks about a certain topic. Also, if the product feedback is used to build a better site/product, customers will be happy.
- You generate easy content:
Another beauty of social media polling is that it creates two pieces of content. The first is the actual poll itself, and the second is when you showcase the results. Imagine if every article you wrote multiplied into two articles. That’s what polls can do.
3. Use hashtags.
This one may seem like a no-brainer to some, but it’s definitely still worth mentioning. Hashtags help people find your social content, so including them where they’re relevant is a must.
How to use hashtags:
- Be specific:
The more specific you can get with your hashtag, the more targeted your audience will be—and a targeted audience generally means better engagement. If you don’t have your own business hashtag, find one or two existing ones that really fit the photo.
- Use unique hashtags:
Brand hashtags don’t have to mention your brand name, but should represent your brand and what you stand for. Be creative and try to figure out what kind of hashtags to create, but make sure the pictures you’re posting are in correlation with them.
- Don’t have more hashtags than words:
But many Instagram users have also caught onto the fact that more hashtags can mean more reach and likes. So, they’ve overloaded their photos with as many hashtags as they’re allowed – which is reportedly 30. You don’t want to use 30 hashtags on a single post. You don’t even want to use 5 hashtags on a single post. Even if you gain followers, it’s often the wrong kind of followers ,spammers or people only interested in being followed back. It generally dilutes your message and comes off as desperate. Focus instead on being specific, which we already explained above.
4. Use compelling images and video.
It’s been said before and I’ll say it again: humans are visual creatures. In fact, research shows that an estimated 90% of the information that comes to our brains is visual. So, using interesting images and videos as part of your social media marketing strategy will get people to stop and look or watch.
Take advantage of opportunities to give your audience a sneak peek at new products or events. These types of posts often do well because you’re inviting your audience to be a part of something unique.
5. Create interesting contests.
While social media contests are a common engagement tactic, you can’t argue their effectiveness when done right. Create a contest that is unique and easy for people to participate in.
As an example, a company put on a social media contest, with the prize being a set of three front row tickets to an upcoming football game. The goal was to drive social awareness and engagement, as well as website traffic.
In the end, we saw a 150% increase in overall website traffic as compared to the same period the previous year.
If a contest makes sense for your brand, make sure that you abide by specific contest rules that are outlined by the different social networks to avoid any penalties.
6. Utilize social media management and engagement tools.
While the above seven hacks are easy and effective, they can only reach their full potential if you’re consistently posting and engaged in what’s happening on your pages. Social media management and engagement tools can be easily integrated into your daily routine. They typically give you a place to schedule your posts and also help you keep up on social activity, so you can respond quickly and keep conversations going.
There are a number of tools, free and not free. Some of those include: Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Sprinklr, Spredfast and Buffer. Choose the one that best matches with your budget, goals and the channels you’re using.
There are dozens and dozens of things you can do to engage more efficiently with your audience. Hopefully, these hacks provide you with a place to start building your connection efforts. Just remember, social media is all about building relationships. So, be consistent, be creative and be compelling.