In today’s ever-changing landscape, we still see many businesses that ignore or give very little attention to their social strategies and they are missing opportunities.
- 59% of the world’s population uses social media.
- The average daily time spent on social media platforms is 2 hours and 29 minutes.
That means there are TONS of opportunities for your brand to be showcased to your target audience.
At the core of all social media networks, the intention is to socialize and engage with individuals and brands. This creates a two way street for communication and connection outside of the standard website experience.
This blog post will discuss proven ways to drive those engagements and cost-effective strategies for your next social media campaign.
Strategy #1: What is Engagement and Why is it Important?
By investing in social media strategies that encourage engagement, you can increase brand recognition and retention, which in turn can create an additional revenue channel. Simply put, business with loyal followers can drive more traffic to a website, ultimately improving sales. This makes engagement THE KEY element in a successful social media strategy.
What is engagement exactly? Essentially engagement is any action someone takes with your posted content such as classic likes and other reactions, shares and reposting, comments, tagging, clicks, follows, etc.
Strategy #2: Perform a Competitor Analysis for your Social Media
Your competition is always going to play a role in your strategic planning. When someone shares a similar audience with you, understanding what’s working—and not working—will allow you to make informed decisions on how to move forward with your social strategy. Some questions to consider during your analysis include the following:
- What platforms are they using, and which ones are they disregarding?
- When do they post the majority of their content?
- Is their content informative and getting engagement?
- Who are they reaching with their current content?
- What hashtags are they using?
Strategy #3: Develop Your Own Buyer Personas
Consider the target audience you want to provide content to and strategize accordingly. Next, you must consider what your ideal customer would find valuable. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional customer with whom you have defined their specific demographic, behavior, lifestyle, motivations, and challenges. By doing this exercise, you can create content that is the perfect balance between promotional and valuable content.
Strategy #4: Making Informed Content as a Thought-Leader
Thought-leadership content ensures it’s high-value while simultaneously building trust with your audience. Show your value and expertise through social media content. It comes down to establishing authority in your industry. Creating consistent content with this idea in mind will position your business as an expert in your space.
Strategy #5: Open Your Content for Engagement/Interaction
The key is to make them interactive – ask questions, create polls, suggest an action, and interested readers will engage. Think of it as holding a conversation. For your post to not get lost in the feed, you must amplify your followers’ voices so they have a reason to engage. A simple act like responding to comments will quickly net you a stronger customer relationship. An account that is actively engaged with followers opens up your social media’s overall conversation and presence. Adding a simple call to action at the end of every post will have followers liking, commenting, and sharing.
Don’t make it a one-sided conversation.
This is also how you stay on top of the dynamic social media “algorithm.” The more activity on your socials, the more chances your page to appear on someone else’s feed.
#Hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to increase your reach. We won’t spend too much time on hashtags because they don’t have a direct play in your engagement strategy, they should stil be considered in your posting strategy as a whole. Do your research when choosing which hashtags to put in your in posts. Use a mix of brand specific hashtags, industry hashtags, location hashtags and others that your audience will be interested in and searching. Make sure all hashtags used in each post are relevant to the post.
Video Marketing
Videos are not only eye-catching, but they always make for way more engaging content. In today’s climate, videos generate more shares than text and images combined. It’s never been this accessible to include videos in your strategy. Thanks to platforms like TikTok and Instagram Stories, short-form video content is easy to make and highly engaging!
Watch our newest video series on digital marketing tips for helping you grow your business in 2022.
Strategy #6: Create a Consistent Posting Schedule
You must meet your audience where they are. This is in terms of the platform and the specific time/day. Social media timing is essential in any campaign plan. Build an active audience by posting consistently. Post when your audience is active. Look at your competitive analysis and see how your competitor’s audience engages.
Intuitive Websites will create your own social media content calendar. This will keep your posting schedule routine, providing consistent content to your audience.
After setting up these implementations, make sure to analyze your social analytics monthly. If you don’t see results, consider adjusting your content and posting times.
Strategy #7: Social Media Analytics to Measure
- Impressions – The number of times your content is shown to users. This number can include multiple views by the same person.
- Reach – The number of unique users who see your content.
- Engagement – You can see a total number of engagements and engagements by category. Depending on your strategy, certain engagements may have a higher impact than others.
- New Followers – Each platform tracks new followers. New followers are a key sign of growth and that your content is hitting the right people.
- Mentions – Think of this as a tag. Others can use your handle in their posts and tag you into the conversation. These posts are then shared to their network and yours, increasing your reach.
- Clicks – Most platforms include different sections to include call to actions, buttons you can customize, links in bios, and of course links in individual posts.
Summary
The importance of building a relationship on additional channels outside of your website is necessary in digital marketing today. Social media offers an abundance of opportunities to reach and engage with your brand, ultimately creating a relationship.
People will purchase or requests services from brands they like.
So how do you get people to like your brand? People like brands that they feel they can trust.
Social is a great channel to build trust because it can be personable. As you implement these changes, understanding precisely what’s working and the type of engagement that drives return for your brand is key for a strategy to be successful for the long haul.
It takes some trial and error before you get it right so get started now and build a fantastic social media strategy for 2023
Intuitive Websites are ready and standing by to advise and help you execute a social strategy that works for you. Contact us today to receive a FREE 30-minute consultation.
