So you’re looking for help to keep your audience engaged on social media? You’ve come to the right place.
Here are our top 21 tips for building an interested, enthusiastic following across the major social media platforms.
- Be Clear on Your Tone
Are you friendly and relaxed? Serious and informative? Sarcastic and funny? It’s worth thinking this over before you begin posting online.
This is especially important if there is more than one person running your social accounts, as you’ll want to be consistent in your tone.
An example of a brand who excel at this is Innocent Smoothies, who consistently use humour to keep their audience engaged.
- Make Your Profile Bio Clear
We start this list with this second tip as it is fundamental to ensure that people who follow you know what to expect from you. If you’re a local bookshop, you’ll want to include your location, a link to your online shop and what makes you unique.
What will your audience immediately want to know about you? It may be your core interests, values or specialist subject. Keep it simple and clear.
- Ask Open But Specific Questions in Posts
One of the easiest ways to engage your audience is to ask them a specific but open-ended question. If you’re an influencer who has posted a picture of you wearing some cool new boots, a great question might be: “Where would you wear these?” or simply “Would you wear these?”
Addressing them in your question by using “you” makes it feel like a genuine question that they have been singled out to answer.
- Know Your Niche
Keep your content focused on your specific topic area. If you’re an independent cinema, two things your audience are likely to be interested in are the films you’re screening (who is starring in them, behind the scenes information and what positive reviews are saying) and your local community. Actively engage in your local community if you’re a local brand: the influence of this is not to be underestimated.
An example of this might be sharing a petition to save a vital local service, or using your platform to promote another local business.
- Focus on Creating Engaging Headings
Research shows that an engaging headline is the best way to encourage your audience to click through or read on. In the age of content overload, most social media users want to immediately gather information, in the fastest and easiest way, before they move on. A clear and interesting headline is the best way to do this.
- Be Conscious When You Post
Before you post anything, spend five minutes engaging with other people’s content. Similarly, don’t just log off as soon as you post. Stay online and see how your audience responds. Reply to comments.
It sounds simple but in the age of scheduled content, you’d be surprised how few brands pay attention to this simple trick.
- Regularly Share Others’ Content
This can be either user-generated or industry-specific content and information. Not only does this help you become a valued source of information on your industry, but it also keeps your audience engaged in your brand.
One such industry expert is Think Geo Energy, who use their platform to share the latest in geothermal research and news.
In terms of user-generated content, you might want to dedicate one day a week to share some favourites. Many influencers will do this on a Friday or Sunday, with #SundayShoutout being a popular hashtag on Instagram. Your fans are showing your brand love so it’s important you show them love back, in whatever ways you can!
- Think “Useful” and/or “Relatable” when Curating Your Content
The recent changes to social media algorithms mean that useful content is arguably the best performing. Platforms like Instagram value the saved feature most, so content which people will save is likely to perform best.
Whereas on Facebook and Twitter, likes and shares/retweets still have the highest value, so you want to create content people will immediately connect with.
- Start a Hashtag That Your Audience Can Join in With
What’s central to your brand messaging? Do you want to engage people in healthy eating? Brainstorm what simple ways you could do this. Perhaps you’re a fitness brand who want to encourage people to eat more fruit and veg.
Encourage people to drink a smoothie on Sundays and share it with you via a hashtag such as #SmoothieSundays. Share your Sunday smoothie every week, too, and direct your audience to recipes.
- Join a Hashtag
Check out what others in your industry are using and consider joining those hashtags during the relevant time period. These could be #MarketingMonday or #NonFictionNovember, depending on if your intended audience is marketing professionals or book worms. While it’s valuable to create a hashtag, if you’re a small brand you may find you gain more exposure from joining pre-existing hashtags.
Recently, many entertainment venues shared content via the #WeMakeEvents hashtag, in a bid to foster community and solidarity with one another.
- Focus on “Community”
It’s worth asking yourself: what kind of community do you want to curate? Social media is a great place to build community. While the direct profit is hard to measure from this community, you can trust that that community is the stable foundations of your brand.
- Let Your Audience Get to Know You
It’s called ‘social’ media for a reason: people want to feel like they know you! Tell them about yourself, your team, your values and why you’re passionate about your industry. Instagram stories are a great way of showing some day-to-day content and keeping your audience engaged.
- Use the Features in Instagram Stories
Platforms like Instagram are designed to encourage user engagement. Use this to your advantage. Features like quizzes and polls will help your audience feel invested in your content and many people will come back later to check the results so be sure to share those, too!
Traveo, an Iceland-based travel company, are great at encouraging user interaction.
- Create Attention-Grabbing Images and Graphics
Social media users love attractive imagery. That’s why Instagram is such a powerful marketing tool. You’ll also find that posts with images on Facebook and Twitter perform better than text-only posts. Therefore, it’s key that you concentrate on creating visually appealing content.
If you’re creating your own photography, it might be worth investing in a DSLR camera. But if you want to keep things simple, try using Canva to create graphics.
- Share Positive Reviews and Testimonials
We can all shout about the brilliant things about our brand as much as we like, but who really knows it best? And whose opinion if your audience going to trust? It’s those independent people who have had experience using your product or service.
Share positive reviews and testimonials with your audience, as well as anything positive that’s related to your brand.
- Think About How Video Could Help You Build Your Brand
Video is one of the most powerful marketing tools today, with mobile video consumption rising by 100% every year. While YouTube is one of the longest-lasting and best performing social media platforms, you’ll also find video content performs extremely well on other platforms, with video far outperforming pictures on Instagram.
Be creative in how you use it and try to think about how you can use video visuals to grab the attention of your audience.
Reels, a recent addition to Instagram, are a great way to grab the attention of your audience and engage them in your messaging.
- Be Responsive!
This sounds simple but can involve a lot of work. Let me assure you: it is work which does pay off.
In the social media age, people expect responses within hours, rather than days, and it’s up to you to meet that demand. Respond to every message you receive and comment on relevant posts as often as you can.
- Tailor Your Content For Different Platforms
Different social media platforms demand different kinds of messaging. Likewise, different content performs differently on different platforms. Consider this as you create a social media strategy, and be conscious of it every time you go online.
- Make Your Content Accessible
Add ALT text or image descriptions and caption every video to make it accessible for all, including deaf and hard-of-hearing customers.
But keep in mind that subtitles are not just important to the deaf community. A recent Ofcom study shows that 80% of people using closed captions (15% of British people) don’t have any hearing loss. Rather, many people are simply watching videos in waiting rooms, on buses, or on a break in the office.
Making your content accessible is extra work, but it pays off sevenfold. More people will engage with you, they will feel more invested in your content, and ultimately making your content accessible also helps you rank in Google: with image ALT text being read by Google, allowing you to rank in search results.
- Paid Promotion Is Not the Solution You Think It Is
It’s tough to sustain your audience, but don’t think you can just chuck money at it.
We recently wrote about how to create value through social media and how value cannot just be measured in terms of immediate sales generated from paid promotion.
It is arguably more valuable to have a loyal follower who is keen to follow your content for the long-term than a one-time customer. These loyal followers give you direct access to your consumer, resulting in more insight into who they are and how you can cater your content to meet their needs.
- Finally, Focus on the Audience You Do Have
We are often so focused on the audience we want to have, the following we want to build and the influence we want to hold, that we forget about our existing audience. This is extremely poor practice.
Ask yourself these four questions about your existing audience: who are they? Why are they there? What do they expect from you or want to see from you? How can you provide the best, most interesting, content which fulfils their wants and/or needs? And then do it.
Kevin Kelly argues that we only need 1,000 true fans to sustain a thriving business. This was recently adapted by Li Jin, writer at Andreessen Horowitz, to assert that for most online content creators, 100 true fans is more than sufficient. Keep this in mind as you build your online brand and platform.
All numbers aside, you’ll succeed on social media if you are consistent in your branding, messaging and output. It’s a huge web out there and there is space for everyone, so use these tips to focus on building your brand and you’ll soon find your following.
We hope you found our top 21 tips for engaging your audience on social media helpful. If you’d like further help and advice, Arctic Meta offers bespoke consultations and full social media solutions, to meet your brand’s needs.
