Knowing how to engage social media followers is a trick every business should care to learn. More followers means more readers, website visitors, customers, and people who are interested in learning more about your branded social media outlets.
Boosting followership is advantageous to a company’s Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other social profiles. Having readers makes curating these accounts worth it. Below, you’ll find tips for how to engage social media followers in order to boost page views and online marketing exposure.
The Elements of Posting
This section is directed toward Facebook, though other platforms have many of the same features and the strategies apply to them as well. A small business, for example, may only have a small number of followers. These may include employees, close friends, and family members who are trying to help your page take off. However helpful, though, having a core group of followers is seldom enough unless they understand the power of sharing.
One of the best ways to boost social followers is by having your content shared. This helps your posts pop up on the friends of your friends’ newsfeeds. The goal, then, is to create content that your followers want to share.
Here are a few guidelines to help you create content that is both highly tractionable and sharable:
- Focus on informing your readers. This can be about your business, the industry, or any other related matter.
- While informing, try to put an entertaining spin on your posts and the articles you yourself share. Followers don’t want to be bogged down by Facebook-linked press releases and articles.
- Don’t be afraid to post image-heavy content and videos. These will likely get more views than a big block of text.
- Add in hashtags that support your brand and that are easier to search through Twitter. Hashtags should tie together your individual content campaigns.
- Make sure anything you publish and write yourself is original and unique.
When it comes to learning how to engage social media followers, one of the best things to do is post content that sparks discussion. You can do this through a process called topic farming, or when you go through user comments, trending industry news, and pull in outside sources in order to create content that is original and attractive to readers.
Businesses struggling with content often find success when utilizing user-generated topics. Ask your audience — you may be surprised what you can learn. When in doubt, you can always combine multiple articles and stories and pull them into one post.
Responsive Engagement
Another way to generate feedback is to respond to your followers’ comments. You can also like what they like, share what they share, and generate discussions within comment sections that lead to more social exposure.
Incentivized Sharing
Facebook is full of “like this and enter a drawing for a coupon” type promotions. While effective in some circumstances, over-incentivizing shares and likes can position your social accounts as desperate.
Instead of pushing deals and prizes onto sharing and liking, incentivize your posts (on every social platform) by publishing content that sparks discussions. People enjoy writing up their opinions about breaking news, which leads us to the next point:
Controversial Posting
Be wary of posting controversial viewpoints and content. These posts have, in the past, tanked brands’ Facebook followers and have led to negative public relations. There are strategies to posting controversial content that works, such as:
- Comparing and contrasting different sides of an idea from a business perspective. The most important thing to remember is that sharing a controversial article or comment doesn’t mean anything unless it somehow relates to your business.
- Another common way to play off of controversy is to take the “myth-busting” approach. A lot of social marketers and content writers will pull together different myths and viewpoints that apply to a single idea and dispel them. This is a great way to stay neutral and highly informative.
Controversial posts usually work best in blog formats. While this article focuses on how to engage social media followers, it is good to note that blogs usually make the most postable content.
Photo by: Jennifer Whalen
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