Social media are indispensable tools to promote businesses in the 21st century, but small businesses have a big difference with successful campaigns and a passive audience. Engagement is a top priority for digital marketers as it proves that customers are genuinely motivated and interested in your products or services.
Social media was developed as a means of communication between friends and family, but marketers quickly realized their potential and began using Facebook and other platforms to promote their businesses.
It is not surprising that more than three billion social media users are active daily. As a marketer, you can reach almost half of the world’s population on social media, so it is imperative to create the right strategy and attract the attention of users.
But this is not an easy mission. Social platforms are aware of all types of accounts and types of content. The report shows that 400 new users, 54,000 shared links, 147,000 uploaded photos, and 317,000 status updates appear every minute on Facebook alone.
Why organic engagement matters on social media
From time to time, someone announces that organic social media is gone. It is all about advertising. It is certainly true that accuracy of your targeted advertising on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok has improved.
But at the same time, advertising spending is increasing and especially now, more people are relying on digital media to engage with friends and create meaningful relationships.
This means that real, biological participation still matters. In fact, it is more important than ever. If you want to succeed your bran on social media, you need to create an active and authentic community that will add value to your followers.
But how can you increase user engagement on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms? We show you some social media engagement tips that will improve your small business.
Post awesome content
Do you think that your target audience would like boring and low-quality posts? The answer is disproportionately negative, as you must publish terrible content to impress your customers.
The problem with “terrible content” is that it is a generic term, so that it can mean many things at once. It’s your job to find out what your typical social media followers like and post designs that match their interests.
Time is of the essence
Are you posting randomly, or are you picking the best time carefully? This is an important question because the online habits of different customer groups are entirely different. For example, research suggests that the best time to post on Instagram is Saturday, around 8:00 pm.
However, keep in mind that this search does not apply to your Instagram fans. You must individually analyze followers’ behavior on social networks on each platform and determine when they are active and which are inactive.
This will help you to choose the right time for each post and hence maximum engagement.
Discuss the latest trends
Small businesses must try to be unique and create their style, but they need to keep up with the latest social media marketing trends and talk about them. The idea is straightforward – you want to take advantage of specific topics’ popularity and include them in trending discussions.
Think about the COVID-19 epidemic, and you realize how silly it would be to ignore the problem and not mention it in your social media posts.
Live video streaming
According to latest report, 80% of consumers would rather watch live video than read a blog. This is a new reality in the social media universe, so we highly recommend adding live streaming video to your engagement strategy.
The trick works well because it allows fans to participate by leaving comments and asking questions on the go. Your audience keep watching the whole video because they expect you to answer their questions, which you have to do every time.
User-generated content
The easiest way to encourage social media fans is to promote user-generated content (UGC). This is a dual benefit as you will see a significant spike in engagement while receiving a ton of commercial content for free.
How can you promote UGC campaigns?
Most brands do this through social media contests and giveaways. You should invite customers to create brand-focused content and promise small prizes or perks to the best creators.
Collaborate with micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is a well-known social media strategy, but we suggest focusing on microeffectors who have a loyal and highly engaged audience. About 95% of consumers believe that micro-influencers are very knowledgeable, meaning that you can expect your target audience to respond to their messages.he most important thing is to identify those micro-influencers who share your business style and interests. If you do your homework and find the right person for influential campaigns, you can be sure that it will bring surprising results in terms of engagement.
Use content to connect with your audience
Create content that connects you to your audience and uses it to tell the story of your brand. Instead of promoting your products, focus on sharing content that empowers your audience.
Too much advertising content can make people dislike your brand. People are not averse to seeing posts that sell them products. But frequent sharing of this type of content can alienate your followers from your brand.
Such Content that helps your customers solve their problems will bring them closer to your brand. It will also encourage your ideal customers to share their experiences with others. And it will make your content viral and increase social media engagement.
You can share content that you create or content created by users, such as reviews and reviews. User-generated content is more useful in order to increase social media engagement.
Statistics show that up to 80% of online content is created by users. Compared to content created by brands, user-created content deserves more credibility.