Content Marketing

10 Social Media Engagement Tactics For Growing Your Audience

CopyPress

September 9, 2016 (Updated: March 8, 2023)

Social media can be one of the most powerful tools for earning brand recognition and visibility. But having a profile online won’t magically make people flock to your business. It’s important to use social media engagement strategies to draw people to your online profiles. Once they get there, the hard work you’ve put into content development can show them just how much they could benefit from working with or purchasing from your company, and lead to sales and conversions. Today, we’re discussing 10 engagement tactics you can use to expand your reach and grow your audience with topics like:

• What Is Social Media Engagement?
• 10 Social media Engagement Tactics To Try Today

What Is Social Media Engagement?

Social media engagement is any interaction a fan, follower, or browser has with your content on a social platform. The way you measure engagement may differ from one platform to another. For example, Facebook uses reactions, comments, and shares, while Twitter uses retweets, likes, and replies. Marketers track this kind of user behavior on each platform with the engagement rate metric.

10 Social Media Engagement Tactics To Try Today

No matter the social channel, there are plenty of tactics you can use to not only grow your audience but also increase engagement and excitement among your current followers. Here are 10 social media engagement strategies to try today:

1. Post Consistently

Social media feeds update frequently and the content at the top changes often. If your goal is to get people to see your content and interact with it, then it’s important to share content consistently so that your pieces appear on their feeds. A consistent posting schedule may look different for every business and audience segment. Influencing factors can include audience age and demographics, your market, the size of your company, and the number of followers you currently have.

For example, a smaller business may choose to post on all its social media channels once per day to keep its audience engaged. Larger companies may choose to post two or three times per day because they have more content and a larger follower base. It doesn’t particularly matter what kind of content you post, as long as it’s valuable to your audience and authentic to your brand.

2. Join the Discussion

Social media is all about connection and communication. There are plenty of ways you can start and join in discussions to engage with your audience. Some of these options include:

• Answering questions in your niche on forum and Q&A websites
• Creating or joining Facebook groups in your niche and sharing content within them
• Holding a company or product Q&A session on Twitter or through a social live stream
• Responding to comments and direct mentions on all social platforms
• Using hashtags in your social media posts to have them included in curated feeds
• Posing questions in your posts to start comments in the discussion

3. Conduct Polls, Surveys, and Contests

Polls, surveys, and contests are fun ways to get people to interact with your social channels. Many popular social platforms like Instagram and Facebook now have features that allow you to create polls, quizzes, and other interactive elements that you can share on your profile or put within the story features. Consider topics that help people feel like they have partial ownership of your brand, like voting on a new flavor choice or a new packaging design.

You can also hold contests on your social media channels to encourage good-natured competition among your followers. Offering prizes or other incentives may be an even more enticing way to get people to take part. They may even invite friends to join and try to win, which can help expand your audience even more.

Related: The Power of Social Media Interaction

4. Curate Content

You don’t have to do all the work yourself to increase your engagement rate online. Sharing or curating content can be just as effective. To curate content, simply share, retweet, or repost content from other creators to your profiles and feeds. Make sure you give proper credit to the original source. This is another way to create partnerships, find influencers, and promote communication within your market or niche. Content you could share to your feed may include:

• News articles or write-ups about your company from reputable sources
• Articles or blog posts from thought leaders in your industry
• Influencer content promoting your brand
• User-generated photos, videos, or other content that mention your brand

5. Respond Quickly

Image via Unsplash by @dole777

Social media updates in real-time. Unlike other forms of communication, like emails, phone calls, or meetings, the expectation of social media is that people are always on. Notifications alert you to things happening on the platforms even when you’re not currently dialed in. Because of this mindset, when people ask a question or raise a complaint on social media, they expect an immediate response.

According to technology consulting company Ledgeview Partners, 54% of people around the world view brands that respond to customer service questions on social media as more favorable than ones that don’t. That proves that people are happy to just get a response online, but the more quickly you can meet your audience’s needs, just like in other areas of business, the happier you can make them.

Related: 3 Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

6. Use Social Media Tools

If there’s something you want to do on social media, chances are there’s a tool out there that can help. Whether you’re looking to schedule posts, create your own graphic designs, or start engaging in social listening, you can find a product to meet your needs. Social media tools can help you automate your posts, schedule them in advance, and keep up that consistency that customers are looking for. There are also programs to notify you of comments and questions on your profiles and help answer them more quickly and easily.

Related: Everything You Need To Know About Social Media Software

7. Crosspost Your Content

You can post the same content on multiple social media channels to get the most attention and reach on each piece. When you crosspost content, you may alter the wording, format, or accompanying media that goes with the piece to best fit the tone and audience for each social platform. For example, you may use a professional tone when sharing an eBook link on LinkedIn, but use a fun GIF and a fun one-liner when sharing it on Twitter.

A good way to learn about what types of content may be most effective on each platform or for each audience is by learning more about content marketing in general. Our Content Marketing Pyramid eBook can help you learn how to place the right content in front of the right customer to make them more likely to choose your brand when it’s time to make a purchase.

“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”

Kevin Doory

Director of SEO at Auto Revo

8. Take Advantage of Visuals

Did you know that, according to Twitter Business, tweets with video get 10 times more engagement than those without? Each year, trends in social media lean more and more toward audience preference for visual and dynamic content. The type of visual you choose to use may depend on your products and services, social channel, target audience, and market. Some visual options you may choose to add to your social media posts include:

• Infographics
• Photographs
• Custom illustrations
• GIFs
• Emojis
• Short- or long-form video
• Memes

9. Get Trending

Trending topics are the things people are talking about right now, everywhere. They can range from politics to pop culture, sports to health care. One clever way to boost your engagement is to make a statement about these topics in a way that relates to your brand. For example, during Super Bowl season, CopyPress could make a post online about using a content marketing service to create your Primetime advertisements so that your company can raise the trophy rather than stand on the sidelines.

Related: Can 10 Years of Social Data Influence Your Marketing Strategy?

10. Share an Offer

Another way to grab engagement is by sharing an exclusive offer with your social media followers. Consider running a discount or coupon promotion and sharing the right code out on your profiles, along with instructions on how to redeem the offer. This not only delights your current followers, but may help bring new subscribers to your channels if they think following your profiles will bring these kinds of perks in the future.

If you’re ready to create great content you can share on social media to increase brand awareness and encourage more sales and conversions, start a call with CopyPress. Our dedicated team of strategists and creatives is ready to create content your audience craves.

CopyPress

September 9, 2016 (Updated: March 8, 2023)