When it comes to your company and its brand, the more people you have engaging with your company’s social media feeds, the better.

Why?

Because people no longer purchase products and services based on price or quality alone. What you sell needs to be known by your target prospects. They need to know you’re there and they also need to know who you are (your brand’s particular “personality”). As more and more of your prospects get their news and views from social media, you will need to engage with them there.

Engaging with your target audience isn’t as hard as some people make it out to be. Below are our top six easy ways to grow engagement on your company’s social media sites.

  1. Remember that it’s much more about them than it is about you. That is, as you post updates and information, understand that the people who see those updates are all wondering “So what? What’s in it for me?” So you need about 80 percent of your posts/updates to be of interest to your follows. The other 20 percent can be about special promotions, company news, sales, personnel promotions, etc. at your company.
  2. Ask questions. Likable Media has reported that asking questions of your followers can grow engagement by more than six times. Questions help draw your followers and prospects to you. They also help you learn more about your prospects. What types of questions should you ask? If, for example, your company provides wedding planning services, you could ask people to describe the best part of a wedding. Ask them for their favorite type of wedding cake. Ask them to describe the most embarrassing thing that ever happened at a wedding, and so on.
  3. Reply to answers. If you ask questions, people are going to answer them. Make sure you reply to/acknowledge each response in some way. Acknowledging or commenting on a response lets those who took the time to respond know that you “heard” them.
  4. Don’t forget images. Facebook itself has said that brands find that they get twice the engagement when they use visuals (photos, video, infographics, and so on). Posting a photo or video helps your update have a better chance of being noticed in a follower’s newsfeed.

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Visual images in your updates can increase follower engagement.

  1. Don’t run long. Any post or status update should be no longer than about 250 words. Fewer words can be better. Buddy Media found that posts on Facebook that were less than 80 characters or so had engagement rates 27 percent higher than longer posts.
  2. Don’t forget to ask for engagement. That is, actually ask followers to interact with you. Simply requesting that people “like” your Facebook page can increase engagement up to five times. You also can ask for likes for a particular update. For example, when you post an infographic, a video, or a link to a blog, ask “LIKE if you agree” or “Like if you disagree.”

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net