A necessary preliminary to any type of success in the realm of social media marketing is learning how to create posts that are “engaging”. While this might sound like we’re talking about the quality of your post and/or the product/service it is selling, optimizing post engagement involves a little more than that. For sure, a successful business starts with a good product or service. But to effectively inform a social media user and entice them to “engage” (read “click on”) the post, you need to understand how social media works and how to get your posts seen by users who represent your market niche.
That’s what, at any rate, optimal post engagement really means – not just having your post flash up on the screen of as many users as possible, but also ensuring that those users are the right ones and that the post encourages them to “engage” with it. And there are a range of general tips that can get your company noticed through its activity on any social media platform.
Different Types of Posts
But before talking about how to boost post engagement itself, it is worth considering the many different types of posts you can actually put online because the precise method of engagement will vary with each kind. Most often, social media posts are a combination of text, image, and links. The text needs to be SEO optimized and easily digested in the short window of concentration social media encourages. Images should be eye-catching but also closely related to your brand identity. And of course, the links need to go to the right places.
But as well as text and images, social media posts can also be videos, polls, or related to some cause – external to your company – which they are promoting. If you are posting any of these types of posts, then there are a few specific rules that are related to these as well.
General Tips
Nevertheless, however much post types and the social media platforms they appear on can vary a great deal, there are still general tips that can effectively boost post engagement. Social Media marketing experts Engaged Media recommend that these are the bases to cover first, and before making things more specific.
Encourage Conversation
As mentioned, one of the forms of post engagement is commenting on a post. If this happens, things are already going well. But to see as much of this possible, you should attempt to encourage longer conversations between commenters. Do this successfully and what you have is a community forming around interest in your product – and word spreads fast online.
Share Valuable Content
One of the ways to encourage the conversation just mentioned is to ensure you are sharing valuable content. Valuable content is much more than simply a visual reputation of your brand or a link to your website. It should be something that people want to check out even if they have no intention of purchasing your product or service. To have your brand tied to content which is valuable in itself is a terrific way to boost engagement.
Post What is Appropriate (But Be Creative Too)
To find out what is appropriate to post, consider the platform on which you are posting. For Instagram, for example, you might want to tend towards artful pictures, but perhaps longer text posts would be better on Facebook? Choose carefully but try to make sure this tip doesn’t restrict your creativity too much either.
These fundamental tips all reinforce each other. Valuable content leads to more discussion, a Facebook-tailored post is more valuable to Facebook users and so on. Cover these bases first, and you’ll be well on your way.
