Sometimes we get so focused on increasing our numbers on social media that we forget why we wanted to build a social media community in the first place. If you’ve fallen into this trap, I’m going to offer you some handy tips for increasing engagement with the network that you’ve already built. Improving engagement…true, authentic engagement…with your social media community will, in turn, help increase your social media numbers organically.
10 Easy Ways to Engage with the Social Media Community You Already Have
- Subscribe to the blog feeds of your best clients and prospects. Use a content aggregator like Feedly to easily see what has been published recently and engage with it – post a comment on the blog, share it to your social media feeds, or send the author an email.
- Tag the original author of any piece of content that you share. One of the best ways to get noticed on social media is to tag the people you want to notice you. So, if you are sharing a piece of content from a client or prospect and want that person to know, be sure to tag them in your post.
- Create a Google Alert for your best clients and prospects. A great way to stay in-the-know with what’s going on is to set up a Google Alert for the person or company that you are interested in following. This way, Google will notify you when fresh content about them is found on the internet.
- “Like” the Facebook pages of your best clients and prospects. Social media is about being “social” so don’t limit yourself by simply pushing content out from your own page. Take time to “like” the Facebook pages of others that you want to engage with and spend time on their pages. Monitor your accounts in an app like HootSuite so you can easily like, share, or comment on what your target market is posting.
- Create a group of your best prospects and add them to a Twitter list. This will allow you to easily scan what they are talking about without the distraction of other tweets. A few minutes here each day will give you plenty of opportunity to engage with your target market.
- Help to filter out the chaos and present good, useful information to your clients and prospects. Become a trusted resource for your clients and prospects. There is way too much information available, but there is always room for quality, concise information that helps solve a problem that your clients or prospects are having. Be that voice of influence and don’t abuse their trust in you by sharing off-topic content.
- Review what your community has published on LinkedIn. More and more people are turning to LinkedIn to share their message through published posts. It’s easy to see what people in your network have published by looking at your LinkedIn notifications. Take time to read through the posts of your clients and prospects and leave a comment. If you feel the post is relevant to your whole network, share it with them. This goes a long way in establishing trust if you are willing to pass along their content.
- Join the conversation going on in LinkedIn groups. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Social media is about being SOCIAL”. So rather than start a new discussion in a LinkedIn group with your content, take time to read what others are posting and offer up a comment. Everyone likes to know that what they are sharing on social media is being seen and read. Acknowledge the discussions that are already going on.
- Respond to comments and feedback in a timely fashion. If someone takes the time to engage with something you’ve shared, it’s important to acknowledge that and work to keep the conversation going. This means including more than “thanks for reading” or “I agree” in your response. Pose a question or offer an additional resource to get even more engagement from the post.
- Be human. So, if social media is about being social, that also means we need to be human. Human beings are meant to be social by nature so embrace your uniqueness. Be authentic with what you share and how you engage with others on social media. People don’t do business with companies; they do business with people. So, show your human side and have a bit of fun while you’re at it.
