Social channels offer a platform for your business where you can not only share content but also interact with your audience, know more about them and analyze if your efforts are translating into actual results. At a time when a majority of your audience is active on social platforms, it makes sense to hard code social media marketing into your marketing strategy; Your social strategy plays a key role in shaping your online presence.
But creating social media engagement can be tricky. How do you make sure your brand gets the awareness it needs? Amidst the immense social competition, how do you ensure your efforts don’t land in vain?
We have compiled 5 hacks that will help your brand stand out and grow socially:
1. Use Live videos to get better visibility
Live video is a native social video format, and almost every channel boosts the visibility of content that is native and not the third party’s. So it makes sense to incorporate native formats into your social plan.
When focusing on live video, Facebook is a platform that must not be ignored. Live videos, on Facebook, are pushed to the top of the news feed and therefore have significant visibility.
This helps give your brand a more human image by allowing people to become a part of your brand story. And live video also caters to the demand of your audience. 81% of internet users viewed more live stream content in 2016 than they did in 2015. This points out to our growing appetite for ‘live’ content. By offering your viewers what they want, you can increase engagement.
Takeaway:
Use live videos to go on the stage, to flaunt your workspace or to simply give a product demo. Let people see you and interact with you in real time.
2. Boost interaction by creating polls and contests
Social sites give you the opportunity to present opinions. This means that conducting polls and surveys about your services, products, and your brand (in general) are great ways to engage your followers and obtain valuable information about your customer base. It also shows them that you care about customers’ opinions, which in turn helps to build trust and loyalty, further strengthening your brand’s identity and reputation.
Twitter allows you to create quick polls. Facebook has moved beyond textual polls as it now allows you to create visual polls. These polls tap into the power of visual content in fostering engagement.
When creating polls and/or surveys, make sure that you take the short-form-content route. The simpler your poll is, the easier it is for your audience to participate. To get the most out of these content types, make sure to craft posts that require fewer efforts from the participant.
Takeaway:
Boost engagement by incorporating interactive elements. Add a layer of interaction through polls, quizzes, surveys. Make sure that these posts don’t require too much of information from the user.
3. Create content around current events by utilizing trending topics
Towards the right side of your Facebook news feed, you will find a trending section and once you click on any of the trending topics, you will be shown a list of all public posts which are centered around this trending topic. For Twitter, this section is on the left where you can see the popular topics in your area.
You can even change your settings to find out popular trending tags throughout the world.
Utilize these trending topics to focus on issues that are crucial at that particular period of time. This event-centric content allows you to boost visibility. In fact, such content has a higher probability of going viral! These topics are more relevant to people because they are time-critical and a lot of discussions are already centered around them.
Takeaway:
Create content based on popular themes. Social media eases your efforts by offering you the topics that are already trending. Craft your content around these subjects. Make sure to use the appropriate tags to make your posts visible.
4. Tap into the power of influencer marketing
Influencers aren’t just dominating the Instagram landscape but are also prominent on Facebook. Since these influencers are already popular on social platforms, their existing influence can be leveraged by brands to improve their social media engagement.
Influencer marketing allows you to give a face to your marketing strategy and since these influencers are customers themselves, people find their content much more relatable. Additionally, influencers have the power to create and change trends. So it makes sense to use their ‘influence’ as a social growth hack.
Even Forbes testifies to the power of influencers in boosting social interaction. When their Instagram account was taken over by Karlie Kloss, Forbes saw a dramatic increase in engagement and reached more young readers.
Takeaway:
Leverage the reach of influencers to gain better social engagement. But do remember to pick the influencers who represent your brand values.
5. Don’t forget visual storytelling
Social growth is largely a result of visual engagement. While platforms like Instagram and Pinterest are visual-centric because of their nature, other platforms like Facebook and Twitter are seeing a rise of visual content because people are engaging more and more with visually digestible posts.
When your focus is to enhance social interaction, you must incorporate visuals into your strategy. With visuals such as infographics, videos, GIFs; you can find a wider audience for your posts.
People love stories. And they appreciate the information that is delivered with the help of storytelling, Utilize visual storytelling to get more people onboard. Visuals will not only boost existing engagement, they will also increase shareability thereby taking your content to more and more people.
Takeaway:
Your social strategy is incomplete without visuals. Experiment with the different visual content types to enhance your social image.
Summing up, social presence is a crucial measure of your online success. For brands looking to drive social engagement, tapping into the power of influencer marketing and adding a layer of interaction with quizzes, polls etc can be a great way to boost social presence. Additionally, with the demand for live content increasing at a tremendous rate, hacking your way to social growth with live videos is a great way to engage.
Read more: How to Drive Social Media Engagement