10 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Engagement

Individuals and businesses who are new to this form of marketing often underestimate the full importance of social media engagement. The reality is while plenty of social media users are still using their accounts as a type of megaphone, they're not maximizing the value of the time they invest in social media. The reason is if very few other users are actually engaging with them, the percentage of people who remember their business because of what they did with social media is going to be almost nonexistent.

If you want to avoid spinning your wheels and ensure you actually get results from the time you dedicate to social media, here are ten proven strategies for increasing engagement:

1. Great Images

Not only are Pinterest and Instagram dedicated to images, but people like sharing great images on other social platforms as well. By making it a priority to incorporate great images in your content, you'll find that more users take the time to share your content with their own networks.

2. Show Your Personality

If you're the main voice behind the social media presence of your business, don't feel like you need to hide your personality. And if you have multiple employees involved, it is possible to keep a consistent brand voice while also letting them show their unique personalities.

3. Highlight Engaged Users

One of the simplest ways to increase social media engagement is to show everyone how much you value it. So if a user takes the time to do something great that's related to your business, be sure to showcase their efforts.

4. Remember Mobile

A large percentage of social media users are on mobile devices. So whenever you're sharing a piece of content, keep this potential screen size in mind.

5. Collect Data and Analyze

The importance of a good social media analytics platform can't be emphasized enough. By having access to this type of data, you'll be able to see exactly which types of content are generating the most engagement, and then focus your future efforts on creating and sharing more content from the same categories.

6. Don't Be Afraid of Video

Vine has had a big impact on Twitter engagement. Since video is becoming a social media standard, don't be afraid to utilize it. What's nice is since many social media videos are quite short, you can get a feel for this format without getting overwhelmed.

7. Utilize Rewards and Surprises

Whether you're thinking about boosting Facebook engagement, Twitter or another platform, people are always going to love freebies. So if they know they may have a chance to earn or win something, you can count on a lot of engagement.

8. Be Authentic

If you're ever in doubt about what you should do, it's nearly impossible to go wrong with authenticity. This is something people can always sense, and they will always appreciate.

9. Find and Participate in Groups

While the specific types of groups may vary by platform, finding the right ones and providing value is a great way to get more users engaging with you.

10. Cross Promote

Even though different content may work best on different social networks, you can definitely do some cross-promotion between your accounts. When it comes to keeping up with the impact of these efforts, a social media dashboard is the easiest way to monitor everything.

Significant social media engagement isn't something that happens overnight. But as long as you make it a priority and put the above strategies into action, you'll find that you really are able to start driving the type of results you want from social media.

This is the syndicated copy of an original article posted at SendSocialMedia.com. Interested in learning more? Visit SendSocialMedia.com/blog/

I am Nigel Miller. I work with SendSocialMedia.Com as a VP Sales & Marketing.