How to Create Further Engagement Using Social Media

Over the years, social media has become a crucial part of online marketing. The power of social media is unmatched; it allows you to consistently build relationships with potential customers online. Your Facebook or Twitter feed can potentially become a brand in itself, granting you the ability to instantly share promotions and information with your social media following. Find out how you can gain greater awareness through social media and what tactics to use to build your brand.

Social Media Profile

First of all, you want your homepage to be attractive and engaging. You will be surprised how many businesses actually neglect their page but still build awareness. You need to make it attractive to the visitors, use quality images, clear information, and link back to your website.

Gaining Followers and "Likes"

This is the secret to social media: the more likes and followers you gain, the more often visitors will be aware of the information you are displaying, Here are a few ways to cultivate a following:

• Hold competitions and giveaways – everyone is always interested in gaining something with little effort. Promote a competition where followers have to Tweet about your brand. You can gain a lot of coverage for little cost.
• Update content regularly. Your site should be updated with a couple of posts each day, on all platforms. Make the posts informative and relevant; this will help add value to the reader.
• Use humor – everybody likes to laugh once in a while. Obviously this is dependent on the topic you choose promote, but any topic that isn't too serious should always include some good humor.
• Take advantage of a current trend in the news. Covering news that is current will position you as an authoritative figure. Try and make it as relevant as possible to your niche!
• Befriend other authorities in your niche. By making friends and sharing content with those in your industry, they may be more inclined to help you out – perhaps even exchanging vital information and resources.

Structure Your Campaign

As with any marketing campaign, you should always structure it with clear aims and objectives. Before carrying out anything, you should decide what you want from the campaign. For example, do you want more direct sales? In this case, you may want to try to constantly place promotions and links on your site, rather than focusing on general reader engagement. In an ideal world, it would be advisable to do both; you should be constantly engaging your crowd and constantly make people aware of any promotions.

Make It Unique

Social media gives your brand a chance to flourish and gain a personality. You need to be unique in order to maximize your engagement and following. You would be surprised how many brands just simply carry out the same routine week in and week out. You need to constantly think of how you can improve your campaigns.

Use Videos and Ask Questions

Video marketing is an excellent tool to use online; it can engage customers and clearly disseminate information to your following. A video competition where you encourage your following to post an original video is one way of promoting further engagement. Finally, you should always ask and answer questions on your feeds, as this builds relationships with customers.

Implementing these steps across all social media platforms is crucial to success. Sometimes a different approach to each platform is appropriate. For example, LinkedIn would require a more professional stance whilst Twitter is much more casual and can benefit from humor.

This Straight North contributor is Magnetize PR, a UK inbound marketing agency that specializes in social media campaigns, PPC, a guest post service, and content marketing strategies.