The key aim of any social media marketing campaign should be to build engagement. This means that your followers interact with your posts – they comment, they like them, they share them and so on. You also need to send them back to your website and you need to increase your profits! However, this all starts with engagement.
So if you’re automating your social media posts, how do you make sure that people actually engage with your posts? It really isn’t enough to just schedule all your posts, sit back and hope that your efforts pay off. You’ll be wasting your time if you don’t take extra measures to make sure people engage.
Here are some ways to make sure people respond to what you’re posting:
Ask Questions
You want to make sure that one in every few posts is a question. Nothing too deep, nothing too personal – keep them short and easy to answer. Questions really do get people commenting and sharing! To increase the chances of getting an answer, don’t ask open questions. Instead, give your followers a few specific answer choices.
Include Some Personality
Automating your social media posts makes it even more risky that you’ll come across as a robot with no personality. Don’t be afraid to post light-hearted posts that you find entertaining, or to share details from your personal life in your posts. People respond better to real people than faceless brands.
Use a Mixture of Text and Images
Text posts are fine, but statistics show that people really love images on social media. Thankfully it’s easy to schedule visual updates, and links to videos, as well as written messages.
Don’t Make it All About You
Make sure your posts aren’t all about you and what you’re up to. Ask your followers questions, inspire them, and give them tips to improve their lives in some way. Many successful social media marketers also make a point to welcome new followers, or thank followers by name when their posts get shared.
Comment on Your Followers Tweets
Let your followers know that you are paying attention to them and what they have to say. Leave an interesting comment on their tweet or pictures.
Don’t Focus on Selling
Marketers that get the best response on social media are those that focus on building relationships with people and sharing content from a variety of sources. Don’t constantly push your own links and try to sell to people – leave this to your website which people will hopefully click through to once they’re engaged with your social media updates!
Note, however, that it is a good idea to offer your customers special discounts and sales as a thank you for following you on social media networks. This works better with some niches than others.
Post Consistently
If you’re automating your social media posts then it’s much, much easier to post on a consistent basis. You want to make sure that your followers see your updates in their feeds every day, and at different times (because people aren’t online all day long).
You Need to Respond!
People are not going to engage with your posts if you’re never around to respond to what they say. Automation does mean you can login to your social media accounts less, but you can’t forget to login completely.
Take Your Time
Remember, if your social media accounts are still new then it’s going to take time to build up that loyal following. Just remember to keep working at it, even if you only have 50 followers. If you do it right, those followers can help you grow your following by sharing your posts with their followers.
