#AwesomeInSocial - Engage with Your Audience Daily

The key to successful social media campaigns is the engagement you have with your audience. It’s been proven that consumers buy based on emotions. If you’re not connecting on an emotional level, you’re missing out on a key component, and your social media influence will suffer because of it.

So how do you establish that emotional connection?

Daily Engagement is the answer.

You want to become a regular fixture in their everyday lives, and a go-to place of inspiration, humor, and guidance. Coming up with daily content can seem like a daunting task, but it’s easier than you think.

Here’s a short list of ideas to get you started. Mix and match as needed.

Ask Questions

Asking questions is a great way to connect your brand to your audience. You want to get your community talking, and the easiest way to do this is by capturing their curiosity.  It sparks dialogue and gets people interested in you and your content.

Tips:

• Keep your questions simple.
• Try to encourage people to tell their stories.
• Use images to help get people interested in your question.
• Make sure you brand any images you use since it’s easy to lose the origin of content over social media.

Themed Releases

Twitter has #FollowFriday (#FF), and you’ve no doubt seen #ThrowbackThursday (#TBT) on many of your social media channels. You can create a weekly theme for your own social media campaigns. #MotivationMonday is a great one to start off the week. Explore options that are unique to your platform as well. Why not start off your Friday with an Instagram Story showcasing the week? Instagram is also a great place to use color themes. If you have a motivational quote for Twitter that can’t be carried in 140 characters or less, consider using an image.

Tips:

• Hashtags are wonderful for Instagram and Twitter, but they can get obnoxious for Facebook users. The only exception to this is in Facebook groups, as that allows a group member to search by hashtag.
• Don’t feel trapped by your content theme. You can adapt to seasons, new products, or on a whim. Just make sure you engage with your viewers and let them know that changes are happening.

Contests

Contests are an excellent way to get people to interact with your content. While this isn’t something you should do every day, it does bring a little punch to the party. Choose contests that have goals in them. Do you want shares, likes, or more?

Tips

• Choose one call-to-action per contest.
• Think outside the box and create fun and inventive contests.
• Make sure you follow up with winners as soon as possible.
• Keep your contests tied to your brand.

If none of these inspire you, look to your own social media interaction. What content gets you excited? What ideas can you gather from your own experiences?

Here are some final tips:

• Share stories from your audience.
• Reply to comments as soon as possible so that they know you’re listening.
• Your spelling and grammar are very important. Make sure you keep up the quality your readers expect in both posts and comments.
• Be consistent in terminology and voice.

Start your daily engagement today, and you’ll see great results and show us all how to #BeAwesome!

Be sure to Follow us and Let's Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+,YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and the tools to manage them.

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars