How to Engage Your Social Media Audience

Nearly 80% of businesses already use social media for marketing, sales, and customer service purposes. After all, social media has grown 58% among US adults over the last 12 years. If you want to engage your audience, you need a social media marketing strategy.

Not sure how to keep your social media audience interested and engaged? Here are a few tips that can help.

With these tips, you can draw more consumers to your brand before building a following.

Start marketing on social media with these tips today. 

1. Boost Branding

Before you begin engaging your audience, it’s important to make sure your business stands out from the rest. Otherwise, your social media content will fade into the background. You won’t boost social media engagement if people don’t realize your content exists.

First, make sure to update your profile. Use your existing brand guidelines to maintain consistency. About 90% of consumers expect brands to maintain consistency across all platforms.

About 60% of consumers prefer choosing familiar brands, too. If your branding looks different, your existing customers won’t recognize you.

Keep your brand consistent as you start using these social media engagement tips as well. Your brand includes your:

• Voice
• Tone
• Personality
• Logo
• Font styles
• Imagery styles
• Photography style
• Color palette

Even using your signature color could boost brand recognition by 80%.

Content marketing can drive three times higher brand engagement than ads. You can use social media content to communicate your brand’s value. Brand awareness and recognition will grow as you post on social media, too. 

As you use these social media engagement tips, avoid too much self-promotion. About 45% of consumers will unfollow brands that spend too much time self-promoting.

Instead, determine what problems your customers are facing. Then, personalize your social media posts based on their needs. 

2. Consider Your Customers

Before you begin engaging your social media audience, know exactly which audience you’re trying to reach. If you have a broad target audience, define buyer personas. For example, you might define customers based on their:

• Age
• Gender
• Household income
• Buying behaviors
• Location
• Interests
• Hobbies
• Pain points
• Salary
• Education

Determine which brands your customers already follow on social media, too. Then, look at the social media marketing strategies those customers are using.

What type of content helps them boost social media engagement? Which posts never generate engagement?

You can use your data to make more informed decisions as you start creating content.

Appealing to the consumer’s distinct needs and interests can help you attract them to your content. Then, you can start boosting social media engagement. 

As you work on these social media engagement ideas, think about the questions your customers are asking. Then, start providing the answers they’re looking for through your content. 

3. Create a Calendar

In order to boost social media engagement, you need to post consistently.

Develop a social media marketing calendar. Determine when you’ll post on each platform (including the time and day). Consider how often you’ll post, too.

To boost engagement, try to avoid posting every day. Platforms like to display fresh content.

If you keep posting fresh content, your previous posts won’t generate engagement. Instead, try posting every three days to start. 

4. Tag Other Accounts

You can also generate engagement by engaging with other brands that are online.

Try tagging other accounts within your content when it’s relevant. Get involved with other local businesses, too. You can work together to boost brand awareness and engagement.

Working with other businesses might help boost your credibility as well. 

Consider working with a social media marketing influencer to expand your reach online. Influencers already have a strong audience. You can leverage their existing audience to boost engagement on your posts. 

5. Consider Your Captions

It’s not enough to create content that’s relevant to your target audience. You need to consider how you’re communicating to customers, too.

Experiment with fun, witty, and thought-provoking captions. Start to spark a conversation with your customers.

Try using call to action language in your captions as well. Otherwise, write open-ended questions. Prompt your followers to react!

6. Use Interactive Content

You can engage your social media audience with more interactive content.

For example, you can use Instagram Stories to post polls and quizzes. These forms of interactive content can help you learn about your customers, too. Then, you can use the data you gather for other marketing strategies. 

Experiment with different stickers to determine what helps motivate your followers to take action.

7. Host Live Q&A Sessions

Remember, your customers are already asking questions. Answer those questions during live Q&A sessions.

Live video sessions became more popular during the pandemic. Video content is still a major form of media, though. Videos are easy to consume and enjoyable to watch.

You can learn more here.

You don’t have to make lengthy videos. Instead, focus on shorter, easy-to-consume posts. 

8. Adjust Your Hashtags

If you want to boost your social media engagement, you first need to expand your reach. Start by reevaluating the hashtags you’re using.

First, only use hashtags that are relevant to your content. Avoid using 30 hashtags for every post, too.

Instead, use one branded hashtag and three or four relevant additional hashtags. 

9. Keep Engaging

Once people begin commenting on your posts, engage back! Comment and let your followers know you’re listening. Show them you’re available to address their questions and concerns, too.

Engaging your audience on social media can help boost your customer service. Consumers will love knowing they can always reach out for help. 

10. Track Trends

New social media trends will emerge as time goes on. Make sure you’re keeping track of the trends. You can find new social media engagement tips or opportunities to engage new customers. 

Make sure to use trends that appeal to your target audience. 

Staying Social: 10 Tips for Engaging Your Social Media Audience

Learning how to engage your social media audience shouldn’t feel time-consuming. Instead, use these social media engagement tips to get started. Once you begin boosting engagement, review the results of your efforts.

Then, you can optimize your strategy for even more engagement.

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