Every small business owner should include social media as part of his or her digital marketing strategy. With nearly 3 in 4 adults using social media, there’s a good chance your business’s target audience is also using it. But it takes more than just a generic Facebook Page to successfully promote your business on social media. You need to attract followers who are interested in engaging with your business.
Publish Content Regularly
You can’t expect users to follow, let alone engage with your brand, unless you publish fresh content to your social media accounts. Many small business owners make the mistake of creating accounts on all of the leading social media networks, only to let them grow dormant and stale in the months to follow. By publishing fresh content on a daily basis, you’ll encourage people to follow your account — and some of these followers are likely to engage with your business.
Ask Questions
Don’t make your social media content a one-way street. Rather, ask questions directly towards your followers. If you are preparing to launch a new product, for instance, perhaps you can ask your followers for recommendations on a new product name. Depending on the particular platform, you may even be able to direct your questions towards specific followers. With Twitter and Facebook, for instance, you can use @mentions for this purpose.
Photos
Try to get into the habit of publishing photos to your social media pages and profiles on a regular basis. A study conducted by SocialBakers found photos to account for a staggering 93% of the most engaging post types on Facebook. What does this mean exactly? Well, photos receive more Facebook likes, comments and shares than status updates, videos and even links, attesting their effectiveness as an engagement booster.
Publish Viral and Trending Content
But you shouldn’t focus your social media content strictly on photos. See what content is currently trending and either share it on your social media accounts, or create a unique piece that’s tailored around the topic. BuzzSumo is an excellent tool for identifying viral and trending social media content, although you can also look for popular #hashtags that are being used.
Paid Advertising
Of course, you can always boost engagement on social media through paid advertisements as well. Facebook Ads is a highly effective way to boost engagement on social media, as it allows small business owners to reach a larger audience. Furthermore, it supports both cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) payment models. With CPC, you only pay when someone clicks your ad. With CPM, you pay a flat rate for every 1,000 views your ad receives.
