Best ways to engage your audience on Social Media

One of the most important objectives for content marketers and social media managers is to increase the engagement of their audience on the company’s social media pages. This in turn leads to many benefits for the companies: increased traffic to their website, new and quality leads, more likes, comments and shares, and improved brand image.

So what are the best ways to engage your audience? Below we are presenting you 8 proven ways:

1. Use photos and videos

We’ve all heard the saying, a picture is worth a thousand words, right? On Facebook and other social media platforms, a picture is worth much more.

Using photos (and lately) videos is one of the ways to build engagement. Why? Because they stand out better, when compared to regular status updates or article links. Pictures are easily digestible to the mind, are concise and clear.

2. Ask your readers’ opinions

Because you want your readers to engage in a conversation, start asking for their questions, opinions and comments. This is usually done at the end of an article. Example: you have a post about different weight loss techniques. When you share it on social media, ask your readers “what weight loss techniques have you found to be most effective?” Doing this naturally prompts people to respond.

3. Timing of the posts

Timing is extremely important when it comes to posting on any social networks. You don’t want to post when everyone are at work or when they are sleeping. It’s best to post after work or when people are in transit. These are the times that people are most likely to check for updates on their social network accounts.

For example, the best time to share on Facebook is noon and a little after 7pm. You should also try Buffer. It has a nice option for presenting you with the best times to post on various social networks.

4. Organize contests and giveaways

Contests and giveaways are another great way to increase engagement on social media because not only does this reward loyal fans, it also creates excitement and will get users to visit your pages frequently to check if they have won or received something.

You can create a different contests based on the type of engagement you want from your audience. For example, a ‘vote to win’ contest would get you likes, but not as many comments.

5. Ad’s

We reserved the most expensive option for the end. In today’s age is almost unimaginable for a company to have strong social media presence without advertising. The competition is bigger than ever and if you want to differentiate from the crown using ad’s is a must. The good thing is that they are relatively low-cost, especially Facebook ad’s. Another benefits is the detailed targeting, so you can target your audience by location, gender, age, interests, job title, etc.