Growing your social media channel numbers is only the first step.
It’s not enough anymore for people to simply like your page. The new algorithms in place favor content created by those on someone’s friend’s list over businesses. This makes it harder than ever to get your posts in front of your audience.
Thankfully, there are a few tricks and tips you can use to expand the reach of your social media accounts without having to pay for advertisements. The leading way to help get the algorithm to favor your posts is to increase the engagement your posts get.
What Do We Mean by Engagement?
Engagement in social media are the likes, comments, and shares your posts, hopefully, receive.
The specific algorithms of each social media platform vary, but the reason behind each is the same. They’re designed and developed to push you to use their platform more. All of the platforms understand that if you’re not enjoying your time there, you’ll move on to another platform that gives you more enjoyment.
Each tries to strike a balance between pushing you new content from those you like and popular content. For example, Facebook took a bold step a few years back by deprioritizing content from businesses. Their internal studies revealed that people were tired of their feeds being nothing but posts from businesses they liked. So, they made the algorithm favor posts from friends and family, making it harder for businesses to organically reach their audience.
That’s where engagement comes into play. Engagement activity is what the algorithm uses to weigh what posts people are responding to the most. The algorithm gives more clout to posts with higher engagement, pushing those posts to the top of the feed.
In order to succeed online today, you need to move your audience to actually engage with your content.
It’s not enough that they just see your content, but they need to actually engage with it in some way. Bonus points if they engage with it in MULTIPLE ways, for instance, liking and sharing.
So, How Do I Improve Engagement?
The more social you are on social media, the better your engagement. This means getting real with your audience. Sharing your successes and sometimes even your failures and connecting with your audience on a personal level.
One of the most powerful tricks for increasing your engagement is to simply ask a question.
Many businesses often overlook that social media allows you to have a conversation with your audience. Instead of just pushing advertisements or product information at your customers, social media gives them the opportunity to talk back with you. The brands that actively participate in these conversations do better than those that don’t.
When you take part in these conversations, you boost your engagement numbers and also get to know your customers better. It’s a win-win.
What Questions Should I Ask?
Chances are anything that interests you will also interest your audience.
Ideally, your questions should be vaguely centered around your product, service, or industry. But that depends largely on your audience and the types of conversations you want to have on your page. Some brands go completely outside their industry and connect with their audience over other things entirely. Look at how Arby’s uses video game/nerd culture to communicate with their audience.
If you’re struggling to come up with some ideas, here are 50 questions to help you start a conversation with your target audience:
- What’s the first thing you would do if you won a million dollars?
- What books would you say are a must-read?
- What time of year if your favorite?
- What’s your favorite way to spend a holiday?
- Who was your favorite Disney character/villain and why?
- What TV show influenced you the most as a child?
- What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?
- What’s your best “dad joke”?
- What are you most afraid of?
- What was the last thing that made you super excited?
- What superpower would you most like to have?
- What famous person from history would you most like to meet in real life?
- What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
- What movie can you watch over and over without getting tired of it?
- What did you most want to do when you were a child?
- What was your first job?
- What car did you drive first?
- What was the last major purchase you made?
- What 3 things are always within your reach?
- Who inspires you the most?
- Does technology simplify your life or make it more complex?
- What one thing do you think kids need to learn most?
- What’s something you look forward to each day?
- What’s something everyone should do at least once in their life?
- What’s something on your bucket list you could accomplish this year?
- What’s a product you cannot live without?
- What product are you currently obsessed with the most?
- What song is on repeat the most for you right now?
- What one item in your wardrobe could you not live without?
- Would you rather have 5 IRL friends or 50,000 Facebook friends?
- Would you rather have 100,000 dollars or 1,000,000 in gift card money?
- Would you rather be famous or best friends with someone famous?
- Would you rather have free coffee or music?
- Would you rather have 100K Facebook or Twitter followers?
- Do you prefer the beach or the mountain?
- What are five things you couldn’t live without?
- What excites you most about the future?
- If you had one day by yourself, what’s the first thing you’d do?
- What word best describes you?
- Do you prefer a quiet night at home with a book or a night out on the town?
- Are you a saver or a spender?
- Do you like your drinks frozen or on the rocks?
- Are you a night owl or an early bird?
- If you could go anywhere in the world right now for free, where would go?
- If you could interview any living person, who would you interview?
- What would you buy first if you won the lottery?
- What is something you hope to accomplish this week/month/year?
- Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
- What entrepreneur do you most look up to and why?
- What would you like to see more from our social media posts?
Hopefully, these question ideas can help you get started asking your audience more questions. If you do posts like this regularly, you’ll often find your readers will look forward to these posts and stay active week to week.
Try to mix these questions up a bit. One week, ask a fun and random question. Then the next week, you can ask about your account or product. The key thing is that you don’t want to always seem like you’re talking about yourself. That doesn’t work in regular relationships and it certainly doesn’t work on social media. Would you keep dating someone who only talks about themselves?
If you need assistance with your social media strategy or SEO strategy, we’re here to help you. It’s what we do.
Please contact us anytime if you have any questions, comments, or would like to discuss your online digital marketing needs.