In today’s digital world, it’s almost a requirement for organizations to have an online presence. But when it comes to social media, simply opening an account and sharing content that fails to engage your audience is counter-productive.
Your organization’s social media team should be writing content that connects with your followers and prompts them to act – whether that be hitting “like,” leaving a comment, sharing the post or clicking on a link. This kind of social media “engagement” strengthens brand awareness, gets your posts in front of more people and even supports search optimization (SEO) efforts.
Read on to learn five ways you can make your social media content more engaging.
- Designate a Professional Copywriter
If you want to produce content that resonates with your audience, you need a copywriter who not only writes well, but can also think strategically. The author of your social media content should know how to hook readers with interesting topics, as well as write in active voice, make clear points – without going over the character limit – and avoid grammar and spelling errors.
Finding a professional writer may require bringing in the expertise of a PR agency. PR and marketing copywriters know how to engage followers, which will give your organization a competitive advantage.
- Include Relevant Visuals
The success of your social media content largely depends on visuals. According to entrepreneur Neil Patel, content with relevant visuals gets 94 percent more views than content without. In Patel’s guide to creating visually appealing content, he shares nine different visuals that should be included in your content. They are: photography, video, screenshots, infographics, data visualization, comics, memes, visual note taking, and any other miscellaneous graphics that complements your content.
- Curate Interesting Content
The process of “content curation” is finding, organizing and sharing online content not created by your organization. The key to curating content that engages your audience is positioning the content to align with your organization’s overall brand, mission and products/services – in addition to what interests your followers. This requires more than just copying and pasting links into your posts. Quality content curation is well researched and customized for your audience.
- Share Thoughts on Trending Topics (Within Reason)
Sometimes the best way to engage your social media followers is to dive into their conversations. To be clear, not every topic is worth adding your voice to; but if there is a topic that you feel you can respond to in a professional manner and it makes sense to be involved, your audience will be impressed that you’re participating in the conversation.
- Create a Call to Action
Your organization may have a Facebook page or Twitter account – but is it driving traffic to your website or prompting shares and conversations ? If the answer is “no,” that doesn’t necessarily mean your content is bad. It may be that you don’t regularly use distinct calls to action.
Give your audience a reason to do more than just read what you post. On social media, this can be as direct as saying, “click here,” or simply asking questions to which followers can respond in the post’s comments.
In what ways have you engaged your audience through social media? Is there anything you would add to this list? Let us know in the comment section below. We’d love to hear from you!
