Quality over quantity applies to a lot of things in life – especially social media marketing. You may think that the key to a successful campaign is to gain as many followers on your profiles as possible, but that’s not the case. Don’t get me wrong, having a substantial amount of fans is important, but your main focus needs to be on serving the needs of your current followers. After all, what good is a profile with ten thousand followers that has no engagement?
SAY NO to Purchased Followers
Before we cover the basics on how to improve your social media engagement, let’s cover the reasons why your should not succumb to purchasing 
followers for your profiles. You may be tempted to click the magic button that gives you thousand of fans overnight, but it can definitely do more harm than good:
- It can harm your brand’s moral image within social media (current followers or competitors can use tools to see how many fake/non-active accounts follow you)
- It can put your account at risk of deactivation
- A large number of fake followers is useless for social media engagement (people will see that your have 10,000 followers but very little post engagement)
- Many fake profiles can be associated with scams that could hurt your current followers, etc.
Now that you understand the consequences of purchasing followers, let’s work on boosting your social media engagement!
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Share a wide variety of useful content with your followers:
Social Media is not a place for promotion. The content that
you put out should be valuable to your customer. Fill their newsfeed with the latest industry trends, how to or tip articles that are related to your industry, original and sourced blog content, etc. Find a clever way to tie it back to your product, but not necessarily shoving a “BUY ME” sign in their face. Your followers are more likely to comment, like, and share content that is useful to themselves and their social bubbles. It makes perfect sense – present them with content that benefits their lives, they click. -
Your social media audience loves visuals:
Posts that feature photo or video content are shared 1200% more times than links and text combined. Facebook Video, and the newly released Twitter Video, are all the rage in social media marketing. These auto-play videos instantly grab the consumers attention as they conduct their daily downtime scroll through the newsfeed. Facebook executives envisioned the newsfeed to resemble a Harry Potter newspaper where the content comes to life before your eyes. Go ahead, wave your social media engagement wand and add a little magic to your campaign with Facebook Video!
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Ask your followers thought provoking questions:
Keep in mind that your audience can become easily irritated when prompted to purchase your product several times – and even more irritated when asked about something they already own… Don’t fill their newsfeed with boring survey questions to review your products. Instead ask them questions about the latest news, trends or current events within your industry. Simply ask for their opinion and let them start the conversation. It is crucial, however, that you dedicate time to constructing personable responses to each comment.
As you continue to generate a buzz with your new social media engagement strategies, your brand will gain exposure and organic profile likes will start rolling in. What are you waiting for – start engaging today!
With that follows the placement of the profile in a higher position inside the search results. This profile should be fully optimized with website link, contact information, hours, and business details. Make sure the profile is fully complete and positioned correctly in the suitable business category (i.e. retail, restaurant, finance, etc…). Once that is complete have a strong consistency of posting. Google Plus posts should be based around primarily business and marketing. This is where postings of current company news, upcoming promotions, reviews, etc… Making a strong Google + presence will lead to further people being able to locate the business. Needed is a Gmail account to create a page or “Places” or “Business” page, after which Google will send a postcard to verify the business and give control over the page.
Always make sure you have a complete profile and have it optimized for the correct business category. When posting, remember how many people use Facebook; posts have to be eye catching or else it will get lost in the shuffle of Facebook’s News Feed. The most engaging content tends to be photos, videos, polls, quotes and intriguing questions. Limit the wording, the current Facebook reading public doesn’t extend too much of an attention span to every post in their News Feed. Make your business page more personal; include photos of inner workings, satisfied customers, promotions, upcoming events, etc…. Remember to place the website’s backlink in a majority of the posts, this will help in directing Facebook users to the site. Facebook posting should stay highly consistent, aiming around 4-8 posts a week.
YouTube is the second highest search engine used today. Creating small videos with any type of video recording device can help greatly in driving traffic to the site and business. YouTube results get ranked high in Google’s Search Results due to the popularity of the site and as a subsidiary. YouTube videos are simple to upload and can be a highly engaging mean of marketing. Creating videos of business developments, employee vignettes, entertaining commercials, and company promotions/events can mean even more eyes on the actual product offering. Remember to optimize each video with proper use of tags, title, description, annotations, and conversation.
friends. However, this platform goes far beyond career searching and plays a large part in B2B marketing. With 101 million users, including executives for almost every fortune 500 company, LinkedIn has become a community of business minded individuals. LinkedIn provides the opportunity to share information about your company and its services to a direct market of users that joined the platform for the sole purpose of bettering their company. LinkedIn is highly underestimated and is the best facilitator for B2B marketing strategy.