Internet Marketing | Search Engine Optimisation | SEO | Cam Wilkes

Social Media is just that … Social.

Building, maintaining and engaging a strong following in Social Media is not just about ramming product or service information down people’s throats – it’s much more dynamic than that. Engagement must be encouraged – consider listening to your followers for a change.

If you’re having trouble building or retaining your followers in any of the major social media platforms, you may need to take a step back from what you’re doing and ask yourself “If I was in a room, face-to-face with these people, how would I be interacting with them?”

It’s a common process – a person/business create themselves a profile or page on a Social Media site and after recruiting family, friends and unsuspecting hangers on, start ramming their product or service down the throat of their (hard worked for) friends, likes, followers and contacts.

Pushy marketing tactics generally result in a steady exodus of followers from the profile leaving the profile manager wondering where & why everyone’s leaving & what they’ve done wrong.

Here are a few possible reasons……

They’ve given their audience nothing – they’ve shown no consideration to their interests or emotions. Unless they’re on the market for your product or service at the time, followers see no personal value in constant hard sell and they leave.

So, what are the types of posts that encourage engagement?

We’ll take facebook as our example platform – here are 12 types of post that will help engage your audience:

1. Pictures – Your audience doesn’t have to think too hard and are more willing to give opinions.

2. Fill in the blank – eg. “My favorite time of the day is _________ because ________”. An extremely engaging post type that strongly encourages interaction.

3. Questions – Asking your fans for opinions or their experience with certain products or services is an extremely effective way of getting a response from your fan base.

4. Trivia – Trivia posts can bring out the competitive streak in your followers. They like others to know that they know the answers.

5. Quotes – Quotes inspire thought that inspire responses.

6. Videos – One of THE most engaging of them all, especially the strange and funny videos.

7. Holiday wishes – Wishing your followers and fans best wishes for important holidays shows the human side of your brand.

8. Thanking your fans when celebrating milestones – when you meet certain milestones (1000 fans, 50,000 fans, major business success), celebrate it with your fans and make them feel they played a part in your success.

9. Call to action – Simply asking for engagement works wonders “Like this photo if you agree with….” type posts are extremely successful in encouraging action if used sparingly.

10. Offer challenges – Puzzles and other visual challenges inspire cognitive engagement providing they are suited to and interesting to your audience.

11. “like” only access – Offer your audience privileged and valuable information, downloads and videos if they like your facebook page.

12. Polls – Not only a great way to encourage interaction on current events or trends but also a great way to get feedback on things you are/could be/should be doing on with your facebook page to make it more interesting to your fans.

For some great discussion and feedback on all things facebook, visit the Social Media Examiner and join the facebook club.

Check out my profile while your there and hook me up as a friend.