With 3.8 billion users, social media platforms have the power to put you in front of a huge audience. It’s one thing to have your content seen by your audience, but do they interact and engage with it? This is your chance to showcase your products and services, as your posts have to compete against DMs from their friends, posts from their family, and a feed full of dog videos. How do you grab your audience’s attention and engage with your social media users?
By the end of this post, you will have a better understanding of how to create more engaging content on social media and how to stand out from the competition. First, let’s take a look at the anatomy of a social media post and how you can make each factor worth interacting with.
Post Anatomy
Caption: You have on average 150 characters, or 15 words, to captivate your audience. You should describe your image or video, or draw attention with a question, statement, or headline.
Emoji: Include relevant emojis naturally within the caption to add tone and visual interest.
Call to action: Asking a question most certainly encourages comments, or you can share a link to invite your audience to learn more or buy.
Mentions: To increase your visibility and reach, mention other accounts (yours or others) that are relevant to your post. If you use quotes from influencers in your blog, be sure to mention them also on social media. Tag them with a link to your content and they might share it with their audience, giving you a much bigger reach.
Hashtags: Add topical and relevant keywords for added reach. Depending on which social media channel you are posting to, there is an optimum number of hashtags to use. For example:
- Twitter: 1-2
- Facebook 1-2
- Instagram: 5-10
- Pinterest: 2-5
Images or videos: Include compelling high-quality photos or video clips that match your brand’s voice and style.
What Types of Social Posts Are There?
It is key to share a variety of different types of social posts to hold your audience’s interest and keep them engaged. There is a social media post to suit any business goal. It’s easier to plan your content when you know what you want your content to achieve. Hootsuite recommends planning your social content according to the four content pillars: educate, entertain, inspire, and promote. Ensure you vary the four pillars whilst maintaining your brand voice and style.
Educate
Educational content is one of the best add-value types of social posts as it keeps your audience intrigued and curious. When readers gain knowledge, it feels like they’ve achieved something from reading your post so they will come back for the next post to see what else they can learn. It also might encourage them to share with their followers. Formats of this type of content include tips, FAQs, and Top Lists. This is your opportunity to create educational content that is about your brand or relevant to you and your audience.
Entertain
To entertain your audience, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be funny, although when done well, it can be very effective. If you entertain your audience, you are leaving a lasting impression and they’ll be sure to remember your page and keep coming back to check for new posts. Some examples of entertaining posts include stories, behind-the-scenes, and before-and-after posts.
Inspire
To inspire your audience, your post should be positive and memorable, creating an emotional impact. It will drive your audience to want to take action or look at things in a new light. This could be in the form of an individual-focused story, social responsibility, or community.
Promote
The other pillars are key to encouraging engagement and interaction and this final pillar is to take them to the next step. Guide your audience into what you want them to do with a call to action. An example of this can be, shop now, click on the link in our bio, enter our giveaway, and leave a comment.
5 Ways to Create Engaging Content
1. Visuals
Let your creativity juices flow with your social media posts. Post photos that speak to your audience and you’ll see those likes and comments skyrocket. One tip is to try and use your own photos as Stock images simply don’t perform as well as real, relatable photos.
Statistically, visual posts consistently get more clicks, shares, and comments than posts with text only. Try using a mixture of photos, images with text overlay, and videos to enhance the value and aesthetic feel of your posts. You don’t need to add a visual element to every single post, except for Instagram, but do keep an eye on how visuals affect audience engagement and adjust your strategy accordingly.
2. Repurpose Your Evergreen Content into Graphics
Did you know that people remember visual information 65% longer than text? Why not take advantage of that and take your best performing pieces of evergreen content and repurpose them into infographics, charts, graphs, and images. You can pull various quotes or main points from your content to make them sharable.
Consider breaking long-form pieces of content, such as catalogues, online courses, podcasts, into bite-sized, easily digestible social posts. You can transform a detailed blog article into a Top 10 list or a how-to article into Tips and Tricks post. It’s important to track the performance of your repurposed content to help you better understand your audience and tweak future content to meet their needs and interests.
- Share Customer Testimonials & Reviews
It’s a well-known fact that consumers scour the internet for reviews before committing to buying a new product. In fact, the average buyer reads seven reviews before making a purchase from a new brand. Take your top reviews shared by happy, and even returning, customers and create social media posts broadcasting their positive feedback.
- Add Social Media Icons to Your Email Newsletters and Blogs
Social media and email marketing work hand-in-hand. Adding social media icons to your email newsletters allows your readers to explore further into what you are doing on their favorite social platforms. It’s also a great way to encourage click-throughs on emails and increases engagement on your email statistics.
You can also have share to social media icon under each blog post. That is a great way to encourage readers to share their favorite content with their audience, giving you a bigger reach.
- Get Close to your Audience with Stories
Any brand who wants to get to know their audience and come down to a personal level with them should start including stories into their social media content plan. There are 500 million people using Instagram Stories and another 500 million people using Facebook Stories. In fact, 62% of consumers say they discovered a new brand through stories.
Stories are a great way to share entertaining and inspirational content and by adding stickers, such as polls, questions, or quizzes, you are creating meaningful engagements with your audience.
We Promise Success
Yes, creating engaging content that stands out on social media can be difficult at times. However, once you learn how to connect to your audience in an approachable, natural, and engaging way, you’ll see your brand presence rise in no time.
Are you looking for an agency that gets you real, measurable results with engaging social media content? We can help you with social media and much more. Schedule a free business review to find out how we help businesses grow. You can use these insights for inspiration and let us do the marketing for you.
