The main reason why companies create company pages on social media is to attract followers and build social media engagement. Many companies can build an emotional bond with their customers through their social media profiles and build strong relationships with them.

Over a period, many of these followers start trusting the companies enough to purchase their products and services. In this way, social media are known to make a major difference in the businesses of many companies.

However, have you noticed that many social media pages get almost no interactions from their followers? Companies create pages, and for various reasons, they fail to attract interactions from people. Without social media engagement, their effort to waste and they hardly reap any benefits from this.

How to get higher social media engagement

1. Determine your goals:

The main reason for being active on social media is that you want to grow your business. However, there may be many other reasons for which you would want to build your social media profiles. You may want to get feedback, conduct surveys, get new product ideas and also use it to build brand visibility. Determine exactly what you want to achieve so that you can channelize your efforts in that direction.

2. Build a social media strategy:

Having a social media strategy is as important as having a business plan. Unless you build a strategy that will help you to achieve your goals, there is little chance that you will go in the right direction.

In the absence of a social media strategy, all your efforts will be loosely directed towards achieving the goal, but they will not work in tandem to make your overall efforts more powerful and fruitful. Having a social media strategy will also give a purpose and a clear direction to the employees who would be involved in your social media marketing efforts.

3. Choose the right platforms

Every social media network has its specialties and strengths. However, no network in itself can fulfill all your needs. So try to find out which other networks that you would need to start with and then think about how you will increase social media engagement in those platforms.

For example, if you are looking for informal interactions with your followers, conducting polls, informing people about events that you are holding, then Facebook is likely to be your first choice. You can use Twitter for sending out quick news updates, and bite-sized information and to network with industry stalwarts and experts. LinkedIn can be used for serious industry interactions, job postings, and promoting your products through a company showcase page. If you have a lot of video assets that you would like to display, then choose YouTube.

Similarly, every other social media platform, even some relatively lesser-known ones will have its utility. Pick up a social media platform if you feel that it is where your customers are probably spending their time. Evaluate whether each platform can help you to achieve your overall goals before jumping on to the bandwagon. Of course, you can start with a few and then build your presence in additional networks later.

4. Give your audience what they want

A golden rule for success in social media is that do not to keep posting about things that no one wants to hear. Build a deep understanding of the needs and the expectations of your audience and then start to create and post content that will be suitable for meeting their expectations. In this way, you can keep your audience happy and also get them to interact with your company on social media.

5. Provide incentives

Giving a sweet deal to people visiting your pages for the first time is a great way to start a relationship. Provide a discount coupon, a free e-book, or even a free trial or samples of the products that you want to sell to them. This will create an initial feel-good factor and will entice them to come back for more.

6. Use keywords and hashtags:

Social media also helps in search engine optimization. To get the most benefits out of these platforms, use the appropriate keywords and hashtags in your content. People who will search for these keywords will see the social media profiles that feature these keywords and hashtags and will visit those pages. This is a great way to build social media engagement and get organic traffic to your social media profiles.

How do you ensure that visitors to your website find your social media profiles and vice versa? Remember that your ultimate goal is to increase the overall traffic to your website. This will not be possible if the users visit your website but never return to it again. While your website is your primary sales tool, social media profiles should feed your website by sending traffic to it every day. It is an immensely powerful tool to build stickiness with your customers

Place the links to your social media profile prominently on your website. Include them in the header, footer, sidebars, and anywhere you feel they will look good. Encourage people to visit your social media pages by placing text on your website. Promote your social media profiles through emails. On the other hand, place a link to your website and all social media profiles that you maintain. Doing this will ensure that your target audience keeps visiting all your points of presence and that they have enough content on their plate to stay engaged.

8. Promote your social media profiles:

Once you have created your social media profiles, and thereafter, start telling people about your social media pages and encourage them to start following those. You can include the social media icons in every marketing campaign that you conduct, both online and offline. Another great way to promote these is to include these in the email signatures of all the employees in your organization and yourself.

9. Rules for posting:

While posting, remember these basic rules, which will help you to be more courteous and relevant:

a. Create useful content:

When users find interesting content, their social media engagement goes up manifold. Instead of posting content just for the sake of it, try to evaluate what will be useful for the reader. It might be a solution to a long-term problem that they have been facing, best practices, and even something on the current event or development.

b. Mix humor with seriousness:

No one would want to read about serious topics all the time. So, most of the best brands try to feature something a little different from what they normally post. It may be something humorous, off-topic, and even controversial occasionally. This helps in maintaining a healthy content mix that makes visiting the social media pages something the followers would look forward to.

c. Mix Humor with seriousness:

I have seen many brands make this mistake: they automate the posting process. A common mistake that many companies make is to not show the real name of the author who has created the content. I have seen many blogs which show the author’s name as admin, and social media profiles that is that the author is the brand itself. That automation results in topics being posted on blogs and social media by the “admin” or the brand. After a while, the users grow tired of hearing from a faceless brand and move away.

There have been a lot of talks recently about this aspect already. As a best practice try to make your brand more human by telling your followers about the people in your company who write blogs or social media posts and occasionally post pictures about your company as well. This makes the users feel attached to your company and they start appreciating your good and occasionally bad content as well. They will start taking the names of the authors while commenting, resulting in better interactions with your company.

d. Be regular:

Don’t vanish for a long time after posting regularly for a few days. Build a habit of posting content regularly, so that your followers always get something new when they visit your page.

e. Stop being over-promotional:

Your followers will soon get tired if you only post marketing messages promoting your products and services on your social media. Michael Hyatt puts forward his view on this wonderfully:

This phenomenon is what I have come to call the 20-to-1 rule. It represents a ratio. It means that you must make 20 relational deposits for every marketing withdrawal. Michael Hyatt Tweet

He says that the ideal mix should be just 1 marketing content for every 20 non-marketing content that you post on social media.

So, stop using social media for your promotional purposes immediately. Otherwise soon you will end up having a page with no social media engagement, as your fans will desert you quickly.

10. Rules for interacting with Your followers:

a. Avoid slang language:

Do not use it, and do not allow anyone to use profanities on your social media page, even if jokingly. If you feel that a follower is showing acceptable behavior or using unacceptable language, then immediately warn him. If this continues, then ban him from your page. Inappropriate language is a sure-shot way to irritate and alienate followers and reduce social media engagement.

b. Acknowledge the contributions:

Saying a simple thanks to people who like or share your profile, provide valuable feedback, and help you in any other way is a fantastic way to show that you appreciate their contribution. Nothing can be worse for your followers than doing something for your brand and not getting newly recognized and acknowledged for it.

c. Respond sincerely and regularly:

Read the comments that your followers post and respond to their queries and concerns honestly. Make this a regular habit. This is a fantastic way to build up a relationship with your followers and encourage them to interact with you further.

In conclusion, it can be said that every social media profile has a different specialty and style. You need to adapt your approach accordingly. Social media marketing is an extremely powerful tool that you have in your hands today. Utilize it well and see a significant difference in the social media engagement you will get for your business.

Feel free to comment or contact us if you need any further information or help with managing your social media profiles.