5 Little Things That Have a HUGE Impact on Social Engagement

It can be very disheartening to pour your time into social media, only to be greeted with silence on your page. You can have the best content in the whole wide world, a great product or service, and an amazing company owner, but it isn’t obvious if the sound of crickets chirping is all that people visiting your profile hear. You need to build social engagement, and fast, if you want to get the most for your efforts. So, how do you do it? Here are five little things you can change on your social media accounts right now, that are sure to get people talking.

1. Start with an Awesome Cover Image and Profile Photos

Before people even visit your page, they’ll see (or they should be seeing) your profile image out and about. Make sure it’s something that can be easily-identified, like a company logo. It should also be a simple, yet high-resolution image, so it displays cleanly on all devices. Your cover image should identify your brand at a glance, and let people know what you’re about without having to read. Choose only high-quality images, and switch them out frequently. This is also a great place to showcase a sale or event, or simply provide seasonal warmth. Starbucks always delivers a beautiful cover that changes with the seasons, and their icon is their globally-recognized logo.

3. Include Interactive Features

One of the easiest ways to get people interacting on your page is to include quizzes and polls. You can have people vote on nonsensical things like their favorite fall food, or create brand-related engagement by allowing people to choose your next sale.

https://twitter.com/hunterwalk/status/647190413120376834

3. Be on the Right Networks for Your Followers

If you’re trying to reach a predominantly male, highly-educated audience, you’re not likely to find it on Pinterest. You’ll probably want to reach them on LinkedIn, or maybe even Facebook, according to the demographics gathered by Pew. Let’s take the nationally-recognized brand, Forever21, for instance. We know that their usual consumer is likely a younger woman, so some of their best bets are going to be Pinterest and Twitter. Indeed, their LinkedIn profile has just shy of 121,000 followers, which is easily beaten out by 259,000 on their Pinterest page. However, their Twitter account totally kills it, with 2.12 million followers.

4. Don’t Try to Sell too Much or too Often

Your content should be a mix of things that are beneficial to your readers. Usually, anything that’s relevant to your industry will work. Ikea does a fair job of creating an ideal content mix on their Twitter account. There are design tips, DIY hacks, and even general advisories.

https://twitter.com/IKEAUSA/status/646074646068985857

5. Feeding the Audience

Your audience needs to see your brand frequently, though how often you should post varies by platform. Most importantly, though, you should always respond to someone who posts on your page, because it gives your small business a change to create a lifelong customer, and it also makes you appear more friendly to others who happen to stop by. If you really want to engage your audience, copy Taco Bell and retweet things from your followers. The company does it daily.

https://twitter.com/ErinAlexander_0/status/644926896975822848

It doesn’t take a lot of time or money to get better social media engagement. You just need to know where your audience is and connect with them on a personal level. Give these five tips a try and measure your success, so you can duplicate it.