Keeping Social Media Social

When it comes to social media, it’s not enough to post content. You must actively engage your audience. The number of fans or followers you have is less important than the percent who click on your links, reply to your tweets, post on your page, and ultimately buy from you.

Choose Your Platform

One of the first steps to engagement is choosing the social media platforms that match your business. If you aren’t in the right place, you won’t find anyone who is interested in your business. For instance, a LinkedIn presence is practical for B2B marketing while Tumblr or Instagram make sense if you are selling to young adults.

Cultivate Your Audience

Once you’re on the right platform, you need to reach the audience that actually wants to connect. To do this, networking is key. Some platforms like Facebook, for instance, have even changed how posts are displayed to deliver a more relevant experience for users. A recent algorithm change resulted in posts no longer instantly appearing on all fans’ newsfeeds. One option for countering this change is paying to boost your posts, but you can also increase organic reach by encouraging interaction. When someone likes or comments on a post, that action shows up in the newsfeeds of their friends, which means your post becomes visible to a greater audience.

Engage, Engage!

Creating engaging content will require some skill, but there are some basic tricks that improve visibility, like using images in every post. Once the post is seen however, you still need people to take a social action. One of the best ways to encourage these actions is to make the subject about the audience. While Twitter is the ideal platform for sharing news and announcements, most platforms should be used to cultivate a presence that makes people want to connect. Here are a couple of posting strategies:

1. Ask questions and start conversations to get some informal feedback from customers
2. Establish yourself as a thought leader by sharing interesting content and offering your brand’s perspective
3. Offer promotions or contests that use trending keywords and hashtags

Depending on your business, you may want to portray yourself as an expert resource, a fun friend, or a business partner. You can even blend all three – as long as you’re maintaining a consistent brand. The beauty of social media is that it allows for a lot of transparency and great opportunities to build trust. Once you establish a good reputation, you’ll need to be careful about maintaining it.

Measure Your Progress

The ultimate goal for businesses using social media is to generate leads, so monitoring is necessary to see if you are being effective, and where to make improvements. Start with establishing a goal, like bringing in three leads per week. Plan how you can engage directly with a few target individuals and draw them towards having an offline conversation, at which point you can consider them converted. For your general audience, just keep delivering what they like the best by measuring which posts see more activity or widespread coverage, then continuing to post similar content.

Social media is about your relationship with potential and existing customers. Just keep talking, keep engaging, and keep social media… social!