Most businesses use social media to build a community for their brand. It’s a great tactic, but social media is not fool proof and unless you approach your social media channels in the right way, you won’t achieve the level of customer engagement you are hoping for. Here are some tips to help you meet your targets.

Share Video Content

Social media is a great tool for business marketing, but users have a very low boredom threshold. You need to create compelling content or you are unlikely to engage them for long. Video is a great tool for social media. Online users love video, which is why YouTube is now the top social media site, surpassing even Facebook in terms of user numbers. Text posts are far less effective than video, so to boost social media engagement, start posting video content.

Create Interesting Content

Social media is full of content, so to attract user interest it has to be worth reading or watching. People typically spend no more than a few seconds perusing each item on their social media feed. Users won’t engage unless the headline grabs attention or they feel the post is worthy of their time.

Always ask yourself: does this post add value to my followers? “Value” could mean anything from making someone laugh or cry, to helping them achieve a task more easily. If the answer is “no”, don’t bother making the post.

Make Use of Great Content

There are not enough hours in the day to sit and create content. The good news is that you don’t need to. Instead, become a content curator and share other people’s content if it’s relevant to your brand message. By sharing useful, interesting content, you are building trust with your social media followers.

Post Content at the Right Time

There is a right time and a wrong time to post on social media. If you send out a tweet or update Facebook in the middle of the night, very few people are going to catch your posts, which is not exactly the point of the exercise. The same applies if you are hoping to boost user engagement in a particular time zone – posting at night when your target audience is asleep, is pointless. If you are not sure when a good time to post is, use analytics to see when you get the most shares and clicks. This will vary between different social media networks.

Post Regularly

You need to be consistent with your social media posts, or users will move on to another brand who engages with them more frequently. It isn’t enough to post one Tweet every blue moon. You need to be on Twitter every day, engaging with followers and posting useful, interesting content. If you don’t have time to deal with more than one social media channel, stick to the one that best fits your brand, and make it work harder for you.

Social media is not a difficult nut to crack, as long as you follow the above tips. Do you have any more useful tips? Let us know!