As a social media manager for a small company for the last year, the one thing that I have always struggled with is fostering engagement. Everything you read about social media and digital marketing stresses engagement and ‘building a community’ for your brand but it’s not always talked about how they do it.

I want to chat about the practices I have tested and have found to be successful.

Incorporating a variety of media into posts: as an inexperienced content creator I was focused on the text of the posts and having the perfect wording, containing useful information and keeping it concise and to the point.

I’m not trying to discount the importance of these aspects, but they also require viewers to actually read your posts for it to affect them. In order to grab viewers attention use a mix of media from links, photos, videos and other graphics. This makes your feed seem more interesting and graphics are more likely to grab an individuals attention in the mass of information presented to them in their news feed.

Interacting with your most engaged followers: Rewarding those who consistently engage with your content by taking time to comment on their posts that are relevant to your brand has been extremely successful tactic. I have a list in twitter exclusively of our clients or engaged followers which allows me to monitor what they’re saying about their daily lives and offer support and encouragement.

Keeping content short and sweet: Ensure all text is clear and concise and presented in a way that is easy to read. If you don’t grab their attention in 1 second, they’ll likely just skip right over your post.

All in all, engagement isn’t an easy thing to build and is a slow going process. But consistently working at it and seeing the foundations of a community start to form is an extremely rewarding thing!

Follow