Getting your company on social media is a great way to communicate with current customers, as well as attract new customers. While having a social media presence for your brand is important, it is equally important that your presence be a positive one. You want to engage your followers with compelling content that explains and personalizes your brand, rather than spam them with overwhelming and even irritating content that could drive away potential customers. Using a mixture of filler content (interesting posts related to your industry) and posts directly promoting your company’s services or products, you can create engaging and shareable content. Here’s how to be sure the content you share is engaging and appealing:
Know Your Target Market
Knowing who your target market is and how to appeal to them is the first rule of marketing, and it is no different for social media. Use the appropriate language (or slang, if applicable) to speak directly to your target market. For example, one of our clients, Just Bones Boardwear, tends to appeal to young people who are interested in surfing. One of the major aspects of Just Bones’ marketing plan that we focus on, is using “surf lingo” across their social media platforms. Recently, brands have been focusing more on selling an emotion or lifestyle, rather than their actual product. Creating a relatable and personal social media experience is a great way to enforce this marketing technique.
Use High Quality & Aesthetically Pleasing Pictures
Everyone loves when an eye-catching photo pops up on their Facebook Newsfeed. A high quality, attractive picture with the correct dimensions can be a fantastic way to draw in readers and create engagement. Posts that include a photo tend to generate about 39% more interaction than those without. For example, this photo posted on Just Bones’ Facebook in January, received over 90 likes and 35 shares, which greatly exceeded other posts that week that averaged about 20 likes.
Writing and Grammatical Skills Matter
Although the evolution and growth of social media seems to have taken a toll on how we speak and write, grammar is still a very important aspect of content creation. A content creator’s writing and grammatical skills are a huge part of creating engaging content on Facebook. Not to mention, an exceptionally well-written Facebook post about your company can draw far more traffic to your website, than a poorly written or bland post. And you certainly don’t want to be the company whose Facebook is littered with the incorrect uses of “your” and “you’re”!
Keep it Short and Sweet
Shorter posts tend to get approximately 23% more interaction than longer ones, and can even get up to 66% if you keep it shorter than 80 characters. This tactic goes for not just filler content, but call to action posts as well. Of course, sometimes getting your point across in so few words can be difficult, but when possible, always remember shorter is better!
Use Questions
Posts that ask a question get up to 100% more comments than those that don’t. This can begin conversations, and give you the opportunity to personalize their experience even further by being able to respond back to comments.
Be Consistent
Generally, accounts that post once or twice a day get approximately 40% more engagement than those that post three or more times a day. Inundating your audience’s newsfeeds with multiple posts a day will become irritating and they will be less likely to want to engage with your company’s account. Not posting often enough can also be detrimental for engagement as well, because people may forget about your company’s Facebook page entirely. So, finding a balance and scheduling your posts to go out on a regular basis is a necessary and fairly simple way, to create more engagement.
Engaging your followers is extremely important because when one person comments, likes and shares your posts, their friends and friends of friends will potentially see it. This could exponentially influence how many people your posts reach and, in turn, create stronger brand awareness. Use these tips and watch as your Facebook engagement soars!