Running your business social media accounts should be a fun task. It’s a dynamic and instantly gratifying channel to communicate with your customers while building a community around your brand. As we rush to keep these channels active each day, it’s all too easy to lose sight of the big picture. What was once an enjoyable distraction can become a chore. This is why we decided to list some creative ideas to improve your social media engagement.
The Challenge for Social Media Marketers
Attention spans are short these days. We’re now conditioned to tune out repetitive messages and focus on things that deliver instant gratification. If the law of diminishing marginal returns is starting to apply to your social media interactions, it’s an alarm that’s letting you know it’s time to freshen things up. In fact, the dynamic and fleeting nature of social media offers the perfect petri dish for you to experiment with your marketing mix.
Creative Ideas to Improve Your Social Media Engagement
It’s Competition Time
Everyone loves a freebie, right?
Running a competition through your social media accounts is one of the most impactful ways to increase follower engagement. A study by Tailwind showed accounts that hold Instagram contests grow their follower count 70 per cent faster over a three-month period than accounts that don’t. A contest offers a low barrier of entry, with your only overhead being the prize and the time taken to administer the prize giving. Encourage likes, follows or re-tweets as part of your contest and think of ways to get creative with entries. If the contest is fun, you’re likely to resonate with a larger audience.
Take Social to the Real World
A lovely touch when clients make an online order is to include a personalized thank you note. Including your social media accounts on these notes is a fantastic way to reach an already engaged audience when they’re hopefully at their happiest with your service. Our partners at Vistaprint produce a fantastic array of high quality postcards that are perfect for this purpose. This thought can extend to your business cards, where it’s now appropriate to put your social handles.
Host a Takeover
Social media takeovers are an increasingly common way of tapping into a new audience. It works by handing the keys to your account over to an outsider for a day – usually an influencer, celebrity, or well-known figure in your industry. Not only will this instantly freshen up the voice of your account, it also brings your outsider’s active audience along for the ride. Draw up a list of the ideal candidates for a takeover and think of the most impactful times you could slot them into your social calendar.
Introduce Video into Your Mix
As we alluded to in our intro, attention spans are on the wane. A side effect of this phenomenon is the rise of video content marketing online. As sites like YouTube and Twitch grow in prominence, more people think of video as their default delivery channel for content. It receives exponentially more shares on social media and will prove transformative to your marketing efforts if leveraged correctly. Some ideas for video include how-to instructional series, quick tips and tricks, and reviews of new products.
Join Forces with Another Brand
Move beyond thinking of other businesses as rivals. There are plenty of businesses out there who could form mutually beneficial relationships with your operation. Recently, we sat down with the owners of Luppolo Brewing to find out more about the brewery scene in East Vancouver and how their business was evolving. During our chat, they revealed the extent of the marketing collaboration between the breweries in this thriving community. While they may seem like rivals to the untrained eye, the breweries had pooled their marketing efforts to launch the Hop Circuit, a one-day celebration of East Van’s brewing scene. The collaboration has proved so fruitful, they even came together to brew a special beer.
