Six ways to increase your business’ engagement on social media

Are you getting good results from your business’ social media accounts? Or would you like to see an improvement? Read six ways you can increase your business engagement on social media. 

Simply being on social media these days isn’t enough. With so many other brands competing for your customers’ attention, you’ve actually got to work hard to be noticed, and get that all important engagement that leads to greater brand awareness and, hopefully, sales.

Six ways to increase your business’ engagement on social media

So how can you ensure that your social media activity repays your investment of time (and possibly money)? Here are seven ways you can increase your business’ engagement on social media.

1) Start blogging

While sharing statuses, gifs, and photos are all great ways to liven up a social media campaign, you also need something a little more substantial. And that’s exactly what blog posts give you.

Sharing a blog post on social media enables people to find your website (deepening their immersion in your brand) and learn more about what you think, stand for and do. It also adds another, deeper layer to your social media posts. 

2) Invest in training (or hire someone)

If your social media posts aren’t setting the world on fire, there could be a good reason for it: your strategy is wrong.

As easy as it is for anyone to just stumble onto social media and start posting, actually getting a valuable return on your investment is much more tricky, and requires some degree of awareness (and usually training).

So if you’re new to social media, or are struggling to get any engagement or business value from your activity, we recommend either investing in training (like our online Twitter course, designed especially for small businesses) or hiring a freelance social media manager.

3) Change your formats

Is your social media feed lacking in colour? One reason why engagement may be suffering is that your activity is too ‘flat’ – you’re posting the same type of content, without variation.

If this sounds familiar, try mixing your posts up a bit with photos, quotes, GIFs, videos, questions, links to other peoples content and behind the scenes peeks into your business. 

To help ensure your social media activity is varied, read this easy four-step formula for creating a content marketing plan.

4) Make sure your website is fully responsive  

If you’ve looked at your website analytics lately, you’ll probably have noticed that most visitors to your site are coming from mobile devices, including tablets. So if your website isn’t fully responsive, you’re not offering the best experience to people who visit it.

What’s this got to do with social media? Well, if you want people to visit your website, recommend you, or share your content, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. If someone clicks onto your blog and can’t read it properly because it’s not formatted for a mobile phone, they’ll probably just give up.

However, if your site is mobile responsive, and they love your blog, they’re more likely share it with other people on social media.

5) Adapt your strategy to your social media networks

If you’re on more than one social media channel, you’ll notice that they all have their own styles and type of content or post that does particularly well. For example, Instagram loves hashtags, and Facebook likes live video.

So if you approach all your social media channels with a one-size-fits-all strategy, you could be missing out. Instead, adapt your strategy to the strengths of each channel you’re on, and you’ll soon see an uplift in engagement.

6) Mix new with evergreen content

While it’s important to be reactive and relevant on social media, engaging with other users and posting content that is interesting and useful right now, you also need a balance of evergreen content.

These are posts and content that will be as relevant in one year as they are right now. These are often your own thought leader pieces, or useful content shared from other reputable resources. The idea is to ensure your social media profile is a go-to destination for anyone interested in what you do or sell.

What changes can you make to YOUR social media engagement?

Are you happy with the engagement (and results) your social media is getting? Or could it be improved? And if so, what changes can you start planning now to lift it?

Sharon Conwell is a content marketer and ghost writer specialising in content creation and optimisation for companies like Big Assignments. She loves coffee, tulips and her Shih Tzu named Bobby. Feel free to contact her on LinkedIn or on her blog My Writing Way.