Information in this blog post was obtained from the HubSpot Blog, Social Media Today, and Sprout Social.
Have you recently started a career where social media is at the forefront of your marketing? Everyone is on their phones, in fact on average Americans are on their phones 8 hours a day. To grow your business with social media, you need to get views on your posts to drive your social media pages to others.
We are going to talk about some tips to help you get started or help increase your engagement. By using these tips you can get your viewers to come back again and again. These tips will work great for all your social media platforms!
First, we need to start off by explaining what engagement is. Engagement is likes, comments, shares, and reactions. These are all ways that your potential customers can engage with you on your social media platforms.
1. Add hashtags to your content
The first and easiest to accomplish tip is to use hashtags in all of your posts. Hashtags are used on every social media platform and help categorize, tag, and search for content.
When using hashtags, make sure that they are relevant to what you are posting, and to pay attention to the ones that are most popular. By using a popular hashtag, the platform is more likely to push your content to viewers. On many platforms when you start a hashtag it will tell you how many times this hashtag has been seen and this will give you an idea of if it is relevant and truly something that will help boost your ad to the right viewers.
You can also access hashtag generators that will help you find key hashtags for the customers you are targeting. Along with helping you find the customers, it can help you find hashtags that your competitors are also using. This allows you to be confident that you are targeting the right customers when using hashtags in your post.
For more information on hashtags specifically in TikTok, go read my colleague Ondreaa's post about them here.
2. Include popular tunes
Hashtags are not the only thing to help improve your engagement, you can also add popular tunes to draw attention to your posts. Using popular music in your videos can grab viewers' attention. Not only does it grab the viewers' attention, but it can make people pay attention to your message.
Using the right tunes with your videos can draw strong emotions that will draw a connection between your brand and the customer. Music is how people express themselves and if your business is hitting the right market it will create an emotional draw to the right customers.
Anytime you are making a post, you have the opportunity to influence your followers with the music you use, so pick a catchy song that they will not be able to get out of their heads. It is even better if you can create your own catchy jingle that identifies you over another business or creator.
3. Know your audience
Who is your target audience? What things draw their attention? When creating content you want to do that with your target audience in mind. Think about what they want to see, if you are drawing into what they like, they will share it.
To find your target market you need to create your customer persona. You can do this by creating a profile of who exactly you would like to reach and looking into their interest. You need to look into your target audience's interests, beliefs, attitudes, and level of understanding of the topics. This will help you create content that they find interesting.
One key point in knowing your audience is knowing their understanding of the topics you are talking about. If you are talking in a way that you would talk to your coworker who knows the ins and outs of the business, your viewers may not have a clue what you are talking about. In this case, it is likely that they will not visit your content again because you are speaking above your knowledge and do not fully understand what you are talking about. Knowing your audience will be helpful when looking at jumping in on trending conversations.
4. Jump on trending conversations
Knowing your audience or your target audience will come in to play when jumpingin on trending conversations. While you can comment on trending events such as award ceremonies, news topics, or national holidays, you need to make sure they are things the company wants to be associated with and that it will not offend your target audience. On the side of caution try not to get into anything too controversial, or all of your work to increase engagements may be down the drain with bad PR.
National holidays are easy to include in your social media. This is not just talking about major holidays such as Valentine's Day and Christmas, but also National Dog Day or National Pizza Day. Make fun posts about a national holiday that correlates to your business. Often times you will find that the customers did not even know it existed, but now they do and they will rely on you to remind them next year.
Not only can you acknowledge trending items and holidays, but you can use them to run a sale, or a give away. Even if it is just $5 everyone loves a discount and this can get more people sharing your post with friends who might also want to get something with the discount. If you are not selling anything, you can offer a give away that has something to do with the holiday. This would be as easy as saying whoever shares this post will get entered into a drawing for a free pizza for National Pizza Day. This gets your content to more viewers and is cheaper than running an ad.
In case you were wondering National Pizza Day is on February 9th.
5. Engage with your viewers
Another way to get viewers to engage with you is by asking questions. "What should we name our mascot?" or "What do you think of this?" If you are looking to be an influencer, you can ask "Which of these two outfits should I wear to this event?" People like to share their opinions and have input on the brands that they follow. While you don't want your followers to be upset with you, someone will always think the opposite of someone else, so if you use the outfit example you can tell them you will wear it to another event. This will get them checking back in with your page to see if you have worn it yet.
Tell a story, when doing this you can leave on a cliffhanger that will draw the viewers to more of your videos trying to find the ending. You will often see things in social media where the creator creates multiple part series, this is because people are curious and want to know the outcome of what happened. This is a way to create anticipation for your next post. While this is good some times, I would not do it all of the time or your followers or customers will get tired of it and find it annoying.
When you are telling stories, share personal experiences that your customers can relate to. One of your goals should be to be relatable. Customers get comfortable and trusting with those to whom they relate, so don't hide your experiences because oftentimes times it will draw a connection with your viewers.
Conclusion
If you have recently started a social media page, whether it be to influence or advertise your business, using these 5 tips and tricks can help your engagement and draw followers in.
Using hashtags, including music, knowing your audience, including trending topics, and engaging with your audience are all things that will not only help with your engagement, but also attract new followers to your page.
While you may have used one or two of these tips in your previous post, using them together and figuring out when the best time to post for your audience can lead you to a higher engagement rate, while building brand awareness for your company.
Having a career in social media marketing can be very fun and rewarding especially when you have the right tools and learn all the tricks! I hope that you have found these tips helpful and easy to implement into your social media pages.
Resources
Feldman, B. (2021, December 14). 5 Proven Social Media Engagement Strategies for 2023. HubSpot Blog. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/proven-social-media-engagement-strategies
Hutchinson, A. (2023, September 11). 19 Content Ideas to Reignite Your Digital Engagement Efforts [Infographic]. Social Media Today. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/19-content-ideas-reignite-digital-engagement-efforts-infographic/693361/
West, C. (2023, September 12). How to get more views on TikTok: 12 tactics to try. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-to-get-more-views-on-tiktok/
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