On social media, increasing audience engagement is like keeping
the attention of a two-year-old. There’s so many things published each
day that we’re often “on to the next” before finishing the content in
front of us.
So as a brand, the social competition can make it feel impossible to
keep your audience engaged and focused. You can’t expect everyone to
like what you post on social media, but there are ways to stay current
and relevant by posting content viewers will want to read.
Before we get too far into what makes up this content, let’s actually look at what defines audience engagement on social media.
What is Audience Engagement?
Audience engagement is a marketing process that guides potential and
current customers to take actions whether it’s clicking a link or
signing up for a trial. Successful audience engagement will lead
prospects through the marketing funnel and keep them coming back.
On social media, audience engagement can be defined as clicks,
impressions, profile views, likes and shares. The more active users are
with your social content, the more likely they’ll continue to follow and
trust your brand.
There’s so much that goes into building an engaged audience on social
media. It takes great content, attention-grabbing visuals or details
and subject matter that’s original and fully entices readers to go
forward.
In order to gauge how engaging your social media content is, ask yourself these questions:
Does Your Content Pique Curiosity?
Marketers often rely on social media to get users from point A to
point B. This means social media posts have to engage users and make
them want to read or learn more. You often can’t rely on 140 characters
to fully explain one of your marketing landing pages. However, you can direct users to these pages with engaging illustrations, videos and Tweets that have a call to action. These phrases should focus on the results. Don’t be ambiguous with what users will see if they click on your link.
Instead, you have to pique curiosity by making a promise or
highlighting a subject they might not know a lot about. Levis does this
with its Instagram by showcasing its women’s commuter shorts. As a brand
on social media, you have to keep the attention of your audience, but
also drive them to where you want them to go.
You can also do this by creating excitement on social media. Running contests, user-generated content and other social media sharing campaigns can seriously pay off. Building excitement can get your audience to engage with your content.
Is Your Content Unique?
It’s important to ask yourself this question regularly. What makes
you stand out in the crowd? If your content is the same as everyone else
in your industry, what’s going to push you above the rest? You don’t have to surprise or shock your audience to get them to
engage. Stick to your brand’s main message and identity. People always
relate with truthfulness and like-minded content that resonates.
Finding the balance between amicable and unique content can be
challenging. However, it always pays to be engaging and create posts
that ask questions, inherit a response or highlight an individual.
Focusing on engaging posts will not only make you unique but build a
better connection between your brand and those who follow you.
Does Your Content Make Sense?
If you’re posting content about gardening tips, but run social media
for a coffee shop, you’re obviously not hitting the right audience. Even
if the content is helpful, fresh and enticing, you still need to stick
to your industry.
There are plenty of angles you can take if you’re considered to be in
a “boring industry.” If you need any helpful tips, do some social media
competitive research to find out what they’re posting. Like we
mentioned before, you need to be unique.
So don’t simply post the same content and hope for similar results.
Try to build your audience engagement by posting unique content that
most readers would expect. There’s a way to spark interest and still be
on topic.
Choose the Best Network for Audience Engagement
After you’ve asked the questions above, you need to know how to boost
engagement on each social network. Every social media channel works in
its own way, which can get confusing for some marketers.
Social Media Examiner’s 2016 Social Media Marketing Industry Report discovered 86% of marketers are confused
on how to find their target audience through social media. While it
might seem simple enough to post creative content to resolve targeting,
you actually need to be relevant and post for the right audience.
And for each social media network, the way you capture your
audience’s attention changes. Let’s take a look at the major social
media channels to see how audience engagement works differently across
the board:
Audience Engagement on Twitter
With more than 500 million Tweets per second and the fact that less than 50% of users login to Twitter daily means you should aim to strike gold regularly on the network.
Twitter is known for its free-flow of communication, which means you
have a huge opportunity to engage. The speed of Twitter doesn’t have to
be gloom and doom. Instead, use Twitter’s speed to get your point across
more effectively at the right times.
Maintaining engagement is always a great way to never let the conversation sour. According to a Co-Schedule report,
the best times to post for maximum engagement are noon, 3 p.m. and 5
p.m. to 6 p.m. Setting a schedule to post at those exact times can be
tricky.
But with Sprout Social’s intuitive ViralPost feature, you can simply schedule a post
to publish based on when your most engaged readers are present. Take
the guesswork out of when to publish and let ViralPost do the work for
you.
Audience Engagement on Facebook
Approximately half-of-a-billion people watch 100 million hours of video
on Facebook every single day. With those kinds of numbers, it’s
clear why so many businesses see success with audience engagement and
building with video.
According to Gary Vaynerchuk, Facebook puts significantly more weight on video content
through its Newsfeed algorithm so followers have a better chance to
view. Facebook is the ultimate video network for marketers and there’s
no reason why any of your video content shouldn’t exist here.
If you don’t have a large video or product team, think of other ways
you can focus on engaging your audience with video content. In fact,
numerous brands have noted at least 85% of their videos are viewed without sound.
Hipmunk
does a great job at creating Facebook videos that show you the new way
to search for hotels on it’s site. You don’t need sound and it’s visuals
would catch most scrolling through their Newsfeed. People want to view
your content and get onto the next. So it’s critical to keep users
around with the visual medium. Try uploading videos from Instagram so
you can style, edit and better present your content on Facebook.
Audience Engagement on Instagram
There’s no doubt that Instagram is all about the visuals. With the newest Instagram feature called
Stories, more people are turning visual even in the way they chat.
Because you can only link in your bio, it makes it hard to get your
audience to your marketing pages. You have to get creative with this social network over almost all the
others. Colors play a big part in marketing your products or services.
In our Instagram best practices infographic, we highlighted how 93% of buyers noted “visual appearance” as the main reason for making a purchasing decision.
This same approach should go for engaging your audience. Visual
content is more likely to be clicked and shared. Additionally, you want
to ensure your Instagram captions are just as to the point as your Tweets.
Captions are what drives your audience to answer questions, share
your post or leave a comment. Just remember to always refer back to your
Instagram bio for the link.
Audience Engagement on LinkedIn
Known as the biggest community of professionals, LinkedIn is a venue
many marketers look to when building an audience.
LinkedIn is a great
space for businesses to promote their evergreen content and get groups
back to your page.
LinkedIn is about bringing people together in groups who might be
looking for the same content. Your brand can excel by posting relevant
industry content in areas where it fits. Although LinkedIn can be great for lead generation, remember not to be spammy with your content.
Like every social network, engagement is a two-way street. You have
to participate, communicate and give feedback to get others interested
in your brand. However, using LinkedIn to publish content a great way to grow your business.
Additionally, LinkedIn content can be indexed just like your blog. This means you want to focus on SEO basics for social media.
Ensure you have the proper links directed back to your site and that
you have optimized your content to target specific keywords. This will help you get your LinkedIn content ranking on search engines, so never discount SEO on this social network.
Effectively Measure Audience Engagement
After determining your content strategy and best social media channel
to engage, you need to measure how well your content performs.
Measuring audience engagement can be done on several native platforms,
but their social media analytics only dive so far. With tools like Sprout Social, you can take engagement analytics even further. You can track metrics like:
Inbound message vs. replies
Daily response times
Daily response rates
Response time distribution
At the same time, features like Facebook analytics tools show audience growth rates to measure your different campaigns and peak engagement times.
Don’t just rely on vanity metrics like shares and likes. Dig deeper
into audience growth patterns and see what content is working
successfully.
Always Look for Improvements
Engaging your audience can bring a lot of challenges to your brand.
But this shouldn’t deter you from wanting real social media audience
engagement. By analyzing your content, post times and publishing habits,
you’ll discover what works and what needs improvement.
These are really cool, easy to apply tips to grow your Facebook fan base.
Growing a fan base on Facebook ain't easy. And it's especially hard if you're trying to grow a fan base for a new page. 5 years ago new pages could grow quickly & organically -- because
there were so few pages competing for attention in the news feed. But nowadays if you want to grow a high-quality, engaged fan base, you need to plan well & execute well How do you do this? What are the steps for making it happen? Let me show you 7 ways I've used myself.
7 Quick & Dirty Ways to Grow a Fan Base on Facebook
I recently stumbled across a Kissmetrics infographic from 2011 called "The Importance of a Fan Base". The stats are old, but the general concept holds true today:
Let's walk through these steps one by one.
1. Define Your Target Market
Every business should know its ideal customer BEFORE getting started on Facebook. Remember -- not all 1.2 billion Facebook users represent your target customer. For example, I run an inflatable "bounce house" business on the weekends -- renting out bounce houses in my area. My ideal customers are women with kids living within 10 miles of my
house. I target women instead of men because women are usually the ones
planning the parties & making the buying decisions. With these criteria in mind, I buy Facebook ads to promote my page
& target women within 10 miles of my home who are between the ages
of 25 & 45. This screenshot from my page shows I've targeted the right demographic:
86% of my fans are women -- and 60% are women between the ages of 25 & 44.
According to this screenshot, about 7,400 Facebook users live within 10 miles.
And about 1,580 of those people are women between the ages of 25 & 45:
Try using this same technique on your page to find the target market for your company. Remember -- finding the right kind of fans is essential if you want to use Facebook to drive sales. And targeting helps you find the right kinds of fans. Personally, I'd rather have 100 targeted fans who engage with my
posts than 10,000 fans who Liked my page but never comment or share a
post.
2. Get the Tone Right
Now that you've defined your target audience, you need to start talking to them -- using the posts on your page. While communicating with fans you should:
speak like them
think like them
act like them
Using my bounce house business as an example, if my target customer
is a young mom in my area, I need to post things that appeal to young
moms. I shouldn't post about stuff not happening locally or things that appeal mostly to men or people without kids. So to build trust with my fans, I design my posts to appeal to my target market.
Read this article for more info about defining a voice & tone for your Facebook posts:
Every Facebook page is unique & posts that work on one page may not get engagement on another page. That's why it's important to test what works & what doesn't. I do this on all my pages to see what content works best. When I see a
post has been successful, I plan a similar post in the future. If a post bombs -- that type of post is dead to me (at least for that particular page). Facebook status ideas that repeatedly spark response from fans include:
Questions -- people love to answer yes/no or similar 1-word answers (just keep it relevant)
Photos -- pictures always win on Facebook because the website is so visual
Fill-in-the-Blanks -- these allow for a quick answer on light-hearted topics
Contests -- Facebook contests typically do well with targeted fans
(don't use contests too often & make sure prizes are relevant to
your page)
4. Remember it's a Long-Term Investment
With a Facebook page, it's not "If You Build It They Will Come" -- that only works in a Kevin Costner movie! Successful social media marketing takes time, hard work & patience. In my case, I spent about $150 on Facebook ads growing the bounce house page to 400 targeted Likes. So far, about 90% of my business has come from Facebook! Since starting the business last October my total revenue is about
$3k -- and most of those sales came from boosting posts & finding
Likes on Facebook. Over the next few months, I expect the initial $150 investment in my
page to pay off big time -- even if I just rent 1 bounce house per week. So continue building your page & maintaining strong relationships with fans. And remember -- those not buying today will know about your brand when they need to make a purchase somewhere down the road.
5. Keep it Real, Relaxed & Relevant
I love the 3 R's. While building your fan base you gotta keep things real, relaxed & relevant.
Don't get frustrated when sales don't immediately come. For heaven's
sake, don't start blasting promotional posts every hour thinking that's
the best way to drum up business. You'll only chase away high-quality fans & blow your budget in the process. Instead, try a post a day in the beginning. Don't overwhelm fans by flooding the news feed right out of the gate. Give fans a chance to get to know, like & trust you -- then start posting more often. Consistency is important, but quality should be your top priority if you hope to grow a high-quality fan base.
6. Stick to a Schedule
As a page manager, the worst thing you can do -- especially in the beginning -- is post sporadically.
Two posts Monday, 4 on Tuesday, none Wednesday, 7 posts on Thursday & nothing on the weekend... Sound familiar? Stop it! This won't help your page. Set up a schedule with times during the day when you want to post. I'm experimenting with 2 posts a day on my bounce house page -- 1 in
the morning & 1 in at night. And I usually post images or text
updates. I use Post Planner's Queue feature so I know I'm not posting too often & that posts are scheduled in advance:
I repost the same 15 images in my queue rotation using the Re-Queue
feature, and I mix in text updates to get more interaction from fans. The Queue feature lets me create a post & add it to my Queue -- filling the next available spot in line. I arrange the times (as shown above), then enter my post & click the "Queue" button:
Once it's planned, you'll see a dimmed green icon with a circular arrow on the right side of your post.
Click that icon & it turns bright green -- signaling that your post is set to "Re-Queue".
Now whenever the post publishes, an exact
replica of it is recreated & sent to the end of the Queue again --
to land in the next available open spot.
This feature works great for re-posting evergreen content like blog posts, infographics, podcasts & ebooks.
The Queue saves me the headache of having
to remember which times to post at -- and the Re-Queue guarantees I'll
always have content posting to my page.
Every 10 days or so I replace the Re-Queue posts with fresh content.
A posting schedule is critical for any
successful Facebook page. Just decide what & when you're going to
post -- then stick to it.
7. Monitor & Measure
By now we've committed to:
define our target audience
use the proper tone in our posts
post the kinds of updates that get the most engagement
follow the 3 R's -- Real, Relaxed & Relevant
and stick to a schedule
Now what?! Sit back & evaluate what works. Take some time once a month to explore your page's Insights. Identify what worked & what didn't. I can't tell you what strategies are best for you -- because every page is different. But if a post gets ZERO engagement, obviously that technique didn't work & it's time to make some adjustments.
Just make sure you are reviewing the results at least once every 30 days.
Time to Grow Your Fan Base!
Now that you have these 7 tips for growing your fan base, it's time to apply them to your page. And if you're really smart, you'll apply these same principles to your efforts on Twitter, Google+ & Pinterest too.
