How to Improve Social Media Presence
From a brand’s perspective, utilizing social media can be a very powerful tool. It’s a great way to connect with current customers as well as reach potential new ones. But the world of social media is much more complex than simply having a social presence across networks and publishing posts a few times a week. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have if your content doesn’t resonate with them. I’ll take a brand with high engagement over a brand with high followers any day!
Let’s explore how to build a community around your brand’s social profiles, and therefore increase your overall engagement.
Tip #1: Interact & Engage with Your Followers
This rule is pretty straight forward. You want to make sure you interact with and reply to anyone who has taken the time to comment on your posts. Though it may feel small, these interactions encourage commenters to continue engaging with your brand, and invites others to follow suit.
Tip #2: Include CTAs in Your Posts
Let’s say you’ve published a post explaining your product or service. Great, but now what? Getting likes is a good measure of how well a post resonates with your audience, but an even better and more valuable indicator are the additional interactions your followers take. It’s no secret that social networks use algorithms to determine how and where your content will be shown for each individual that follows you. A well known algorithm in the social space revolves around interactions…meaning that the more you interact with a profile, the more likely you are to see their content higher on your newsfeed.
As you may well know, CTA stands for Call to Action. Including CTAs in your posts is a key way to nudge your followers to comment and interact with you. It’s a quick, easy method to bump your content on their feed, and it can be as simple as asking a question.
Here are a few well known CTAs you can use to add value to your posts.
- Comment if you…
- Tag a friend who…
- Save this post for later
- DM for more info
- Send this to someone who needs to see this
Tip #3: Leverage User Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC) is another great way to build a community and boost engagement. By repurposing UGC on your feed, you’re signaling two things to your followers.
- You like their content enough to share to your wider audience
- You’re encouraging others to share their content with you in hopes of also being featured
People love it when their favorite brands feature their work. It provides them with a sense of pride and validation. By utilizing UGC you’re not only strengthening your influence with the followers you feature, but they are likely sharing the post with their friends and network. Their word-of-mouth advertising will net you more followers and a wider audience.
Tip #4: Create Unique Brand Hashtag(s)
Suppose your brand is new and therefore not many people are tagging you with potential UGC content. It’s entirely possible that your followers have uploaded content featuring your brand/product on their feed, but if they don’t tag you, it’s almost impossible to find that content. An easy way to fix this is by creating a unique brand hashtag and including it in your posts as well as in your bio. By doing so you’re signaling to your followers to utilize said hashtag.
You can raise awareness of the hashtag in your posts by including a simple CTA like: Use #BayCityBrewing for a chance to be featured on our social channels
It’s not that people are lazy, but tagging a brand is an extra step most don’t consider when uploading content to social media. Hashtags, however, are something many people do consider and utilize. By creating a unique brand hashtag, you’re more likely able to source UGC for future use as well as encourage your followers to use and interact with that hashtag.
Tip #5: Piggyback on Trends
The following tip may not apply to everybody, but 90% of brands will likely benefit from joining in on viral moments. Remember when Tiger King was trending? Smart brands took advantage of the social phenomenon and inserted themselves into the wider conversation. By doing so they got in front of a much broader audience that otherwise likely would have never stumbled upon their products or services.
Piggybacking on trends can be something as simple as creating story polls or leaning on trending memes and creating your own template. Dr. Squatch and the Los Angeles Chargers do a great job of this.
By hopping on trends you’re not only increasing engagement, you’re also getting in front of a much wider audience.
Social media is forever changing and evolving. One thing that remains constant is the benefit of leveraging community engagement to build your brand and get in front of a bigger audience.
We hope you found these tips useful. Are there any tips or tactics we missed that you implement into your community building strategy? Let us know in the comment section below!
