Here, Kunjal Panchal, SEO analyst and content marketing specialist, reveals 9 tips to help you create more engaging social media content that can drive your bottom-line results.
There are 2.8 billion social media users globally in 2017! And we all know that social media plays a key role in your marketing success. But you must do it right. Social is about sharing and building a relationship with your audience first, not selling. Social media channels provide you with an opportunity to start a conversation with your audience and deliver the right message. You have to focus on sharing relevant and helpful information to build trust. So in social media, trust = conversion! Here are nine proven ways to create and share engaging social media content.
- Stop using text and start showing. Photos receive more likes, shares and comments than text or links. People don’t like to read text posts on social networks. Images help your message go viral. Be creative. If you’re creating a design for your social media updates, always try to place your image within empty space. It makes your design more beautiful, readable and more engaging. Visual content is more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
- Use high-quality stock photography. Your graphics’ quality represents your brand. Never use ‘cheesy’ photographs or images. Don’t just go to Google image search and use the images from there because the copyright belongs to someone else. You have to find photos that are legal without any copyright issues. Plenty of sites provide beautiful and high-quality images for free, including Canva, Pixabay, Stokpic and Unsplash.
- Recycle your evergreen content into infographics. Infographics are shared and liked three times more than any other type of visual. Every brand should create infographics to deliver information in a more interesting way. Show your creativity while designing the infographic. Try various colours, charts and graphics. Do you have an evergreen article that is helpful and relevant? You can repurpose this into an infographic and promote it via your social-media channels. You can use online tools like Canva or Piktochart, or you can hire a professional designer to design beautiful infographics for you.
-
Share customer testimonials and reviews. There’s no one better than your happy customer to tell his or her success story. Most people rely on customer reviews before making a purchase. So always share client testimonials, success stories and reviews on your social media channels. About 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. You can ask your happy customers for testimonials for your social media channels, or, you can also run a social media campaign and ask people to share their own experiences.
- Search visual trends on Pinterest. Want to learn about the latest and most popular visual trends? Do you want to find which type of content is getting more engagement? Use Pinterest to search the latest visual trends (infographics, photography, videos and more). There are more than 75 billion ‘ideas’ on Pinterest!
- Host contests and surveys. Social media contests and surveys are great ways to boost your engagement. Run an irresistible contest on Facebook (such as a free giveaway) or Instagram, asking people to “like” your page and submit their email address to participate in the contest or the survey. You’ll also get new social followers and subscribers. Did you know that 35% of Facebook fans “like” a page so they can participate in contests?
- Tag influencers and bloggers you’ve quoted in your message. Have you used amazing quotes from other folks in your blog posts? Tag them in your social message and give them a link to your content. Or, you can also design a beautiful graphic by using tools like Canva or Photoshop, and tag that person in your social message. They’ll appreciate it.
- Add social media buttons to your e-mail newsletters. Do you think e-mail and social media are competing marketing channels? Think again! Email and social media actually work hand in hand! Place social media buttons in your email newsletters. Ask your email subscribers to share your content. Email with social sharing buttons can increase click-through rates by as much as 158%. Send a dedicated email campaign and ask recipients to follow you on social media. It’ll help you to generate more fans and more followers. And, you can also add an email sign-up form on your Facebook page.
- Use hashtags to increase your engagement rate. Hashtags are among the most popular things on social media channels right now. Hashtags help to find the relevant content and allow you to connect with other users. You should share your content more than once with different headlines and hashtags. They’ll help you to increase your click-through rate. For starters, keep your hashtags concise, relevant, and conversational. And don’t use spaces, punctuation marks or too many hashtags in one tweet.
