In my previous article, I wrote about WHY you should engage with your audience. Today, I want to give you some tips, tricks, and tactics to get more social media engagement from your audience.
1. Schedule your updates
There are good times to post. These times depend on your audience and your topics. Some topics are more relevant during working hours, some topics are rather interesting for people in their leisure time. Also, your audience may be in different time zones or belong to certain age groups that have different routines with using their social media.
To get more engagement for your social media updates, it makes sense to find out when the best times to post are – and then use scheduling tools to post your updates exactly when your audience are ready to engage with them.
Some social media tools help give you the best engaging times for your account and follower. An example is ManageFlitter for Twitter.
Before you read on - we have various resources that show you exactly how to use social networks to gain massive traffic and leads. For instance, check out the following:
FREE Step-by-Step Twitter Marketing GuideFREE Pinterest Marketing Ebook
If you want to schedule your updates for more engagement, check out these scheduling tools.
2. Use mentions or tags
If you mention other people in your content a great way to let them know about it and get some engagement from them is to mention their social media accounts in your social media posts when you share the content.
The same works if someone else mentioned you or your content in a piece of content: Share this content and mention the author:
– often they will respond to you!
3. Use questions
By directly asking your audience questions, you can easily get more engagement. You can do that on your social media accounts – if you are heading for engagement, make sure you ask questions that everybody can answer.
Image Source: Kim Garst Facebook Fanpage
Hey, before you read on - we have in various FREE in-depth guides on similar topics that you can download. For this post, check out:
FREE workbook: CREATE AWESOME BLOG POSTSFREE Beginner's Guide: START A BLOG
You can also ask for an opinion or comment directly from within your content. Many bloggers do that to get more thoughtful comments.
Image Source: Quicksprout
4. Use Call-To_Actions
If you want more comments, likes or shares for your social media updates or content: Ask for it.
It is a proven fact that tweets that actively ask for retweets get x % more retweets.
Image Source: Copyblogger
Even the use of certain words can trigger more engagement. No wonder that „comments“ is one of them. But would you have thought that giveaway, recap or review or some other words that may be correlated with the number of comments a piece of content gets?
Image Source: Copyblogger
5. Join Conversations
There are conversations going on everywhere. Join them!
You can monitor keywords and the related conversations from your niche on Twitter and join in when you have something to say. You can comment on blogs. You can answer comments on your own blog. You can join groups on Facebook or LinkedIn that are related to your niche and start or join conversations. You can start or join Twitter Chats.
There are endless options to find, start or join conversations. Use your chances. People are much more likely to notice and remember you when they have had a conversation with you than if they just saw you or your account for a second somewhere.
6. Use Content Curation
Content curation is a great way to connect. There are several ways to us content curation for more engagement. The trick is to let the author of the content know that you curated his/her content. You can mention the author in your social media updates or you can simply write them an email and let them know that you listed their content somewhere.
Often the authors of the content you curate will be more than willing to share, like or comment on the place where you curated their content.
7. Retweet, Like And Share others
Don’t expect others to do for you what you are not willing to do for them. If you want people to retweet, like, share and comment on your content – start doing it with other people’s content. They will notice you and respond.
8. Use better Headlines
Have you ever seen the impact that the headline has on the success of a piece of content? Headlines have the power to decide over success or failure of every piece of content – and a content marketing strategy. The same piece of content can bring totally different results with two different headlines.
Here you can see buffer statistics: The same piece of content shared with different titles.
Image Source: Buffer Blog
For more attention – and eventually engagement for your content – learn about the power of headlines and what kind of headlines will give you the best results.
You can find what you need to know about headlines in this article.
9. Use various types of updates
It is a proven fact that different types of updates on social media inspire different reactions. On Facebook, images get a lot of likes while link posts may inspire more clicks and great questions may get a lot of comments.
By using a broad variety of updates you can get a lot more engagement than with only posting one type of update.
10. Post more often
You shared your content, and you got some responses in the form of shares, likes, and comments? That is great. Now, do it again!
The average lifetime of a social media post is often not as long as you may think. On Twitter it is just minutes, on Facebook, it may come up to a couple of hours. And then? Your last update is forgotten, invisible or long growing cold. How you can counter this effect? Post more often.
Even if you do not have several pieces of new content, you can easily post more often. Simply share your content more than once. On Twitter, you can (and should) tweet the same piece of content again after a couple of hours and again the next day. Evergreen content that is still relevant can easily be reposted on networks like Twitter and Facebook – even after a couple of months.
Image Source: Buffer Blog
Most people do not share too often of social media. Most people have the opposite problem and could easily post more often if they have enough content.
Image Source: CoSchedule
11. Use Hashtags
Hashtags can be a very valuable means to engage with people who may not even be following you (yet). While in some networks like Facebook hashtags never came to substantial fame, in others like Instagram hashtags are the lifeblood of success.
On Twitter, hashtags have the power to get you more likes and retweets.
Image Source: Buffer Blog
On Instagram, hashtags are even more important and can result in an increase in engagement of 12.6 %.
Image Source: Simply Measured
You can find out more about the optimal use of hashtags in various social networks here.
12. Make it more personal
People like to talk to people. While brands can seem a little impersonal, adding a personal touch and showing the person behind the social account can help you get more engagement. Even showing some emotions and personal opinions can easily result in more engagement. Do not be afraid to engage in discussions, be different or add a personal touch.
Talking to a real person may just be what people need to open up.
13. Use Images
Images can boost engagement, social shares, and click-throughs. They help your updates catch the attention of your audience, they add value, and they generally make content easier to read. Never underestimate the power of images in marketing.
Image Source: Jeff Bullas
14. Let your audience contribute
You can easily „earn“ engagement by actively looking for input from your audience. There are various opportunities for you to get your audience involved.
A conversation can start with a simple question on your Facebook page:
Image Source: Writtent
But apart from this fun example, you can easily engage with your audience via your newsletter list. Simply ask them for input on something they will want:
- what topic would they want you to cover in the near future
- what would they be interested in for your next webinar
- what product or feature would they prefer to have and would this feature influence their buying decision
You can gather valuable input from your audience – and your audience will thank you for it as they get the chance to talk to you and actively be part of your marketing and content decisions.
Show your audience that you care for them, and they will care for you!
Learn to drive engagement, traffic, leads, and customers from social media with “The Social Traffic Code!”
13. Utilize your email newsletter
Did you know that your newsletter is probably your most valuable traffic source? But there is more that a newsletter list can do for you: it can help you get more engagement.
Here are some ideas to get engagement from your newsletter list:
- ask them questions
- send them new content and ask for comments
- inform them about a great discussion on one of your social media channels or a piece of content and ask them to give their opinion
- use your list to start a Twitter Chat
14. Host a webinar
Webinars are one of the most engaging content and marketing channels. By offering your audience the chance to ask questions and interact with you, you have a unique chance of getting in direct contact with your audience. They can hear your voice and get much closer to „knowing“ you than content like articles or infographics ever could.
It starts right at the beginning of your webinar: always open up the chat and ask some simple questions that everybody can easily answer to open up. Show them that you care and want to interact.
I have not yet been on any webinar that did not offer a question and answer session, and if you are going for hosting a webinar, you should definitely offer a Q&A session, too. Do not be afraid of your audience, but open up. Webinars are one of the best ways to connect and interact on a direct basis.
On our own Webinars w always use a special way of mixing up the chat and the Q&A: While I lead through the Webinar, Jonathan is active in the chat and tries to answer all questions as they come in. So far the engagement level on our Webinars has been great – and I admit it, I love to get feedback and questions from you within the Webinars.
15. Use Polls
There are various places where you can use polls. Twitter is an example. Webinar tools also offer the chance to ask a question and have your audience answer in the form of a poll. It is a great way to get your audience involved in the Webinar.
You can even use Polls to get some input for your content. If you need some ideas on how to us Twitter polls, you can find more information on Twitter Polls here.
16. Actively grow your audience
Did you know that social media audiences and newsletter lists grow old with time? If you have a couple of thousands of followers and an active audience, it may not be like that in a couple of weeks or months. You can never simply sit back and be content with what audience you have: People change professions, they leave social networks to try something new, and they lose interest in a newsletter. An audience decays!
That also means to stay at the same engagement level with your audience, you will need to keep actively growing your lists and followers.
17. Use Power Words
Research has shown in the past that some words have a special power to inspire more engagement. For instance „I“ and „We“ do not have the same power as „you.“ It may sometimes be as simple as exchanging one or two words in your headlines.
Here are the most powerful words for Facebook:
Image Source Quicksprout
And here are the words that will give you more shares and engagement on Twitter
Image Source Quicksprout
Watch Your Numbers
As always in marketing, the key to success lies in your numbers. Watch closely what your audience likes and responds to. While we can tell you what usually works, we cannot know what special reactions your own target group may show.
Only you and your numbers can truly understand what your audience wants, likes and engages with. If you are looking for more engagement, do more of what your audience already engages with!
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