Six ways to increase your social media engagement

With so much going on in social media it can be hard to get noticed and engage your followers.
And positively engaged followers can amplify your social media presence and with it, awareness and interest.   
Take a look at your organization’s engagement numbers – are you getting likes, comments, and/or shares?
If your engagement results aren’t meeting expectations, think about what would fit best with your brand and appeal to your desired target audience, then try some of the suggestions below:

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Share knowledge

• Break technical content into bite-size pieces
• Use visuals – diagrams, infographics, or photo carousels
• Create how-to videos or demonstrations of  select topic areas, for example, “tips and tricks”
• Offer eBooks

Create lists
“Five to ten” ways and “best of” lists appeal to the curious.  Make it attractive and use headings so to make it easy for the reader to scan.

Ask questions

• This or that polls
• Ask for opinions
• Quizzes

Collaborate with other content creators
Video interviews or discussion, or team up on a piece of content. This may be a good time to try going live.

Offer contests or games
These are opportunities for followers to post their own content (tagged with your hashtag) or share your content and possibly get a prize or other reward. This also works great layered with an event, as in this example.

Get real   
Showcase your team, customers, or partners in action. For example, show your team’s community service project, take followers backstage at one of your events, or comment on a local happening.
 
Plan your engagement initiatives, experiment, and evaluate your results. Each target audience is different, and you may find some approaches work better than others. But don’t give up, social media has been described as more of a marathon than a sprint, or if you’re not into running, think cultivating a garden rather than cutting a bouquet of cut flowers.  ;)