Youโve decided you want your small business to be active on social media. Youโve researched the best platforms for your audience, claimed and branded your pages, and sent out invites to follow the page to your friends, family, and clients. You even start posting regularly, butโฆ crickets. Maybe a few likes, the odd comment, but mostly nothing. Or even worse, maybe your company is pretty big and has attracted a good amount of followers, but it still feels like youโre just posting into the abyss. You start to second-guess yourself and wonder why you went through all this effort if it clearly isnโt paying off.
The simple truth is that social media engagement is not automatic; without content that people actually want to see or content that plays smartly with the various social media algorithms, itโs easy for posts to just languish away without giving your business the attention it deserves. So how do you create social media content that gets likes, comments, and shares?
Great photos and videos drive engagement
The first rule of social media is that visual media helps tremendously. Gone are the days when a Facebook status update could be just a few sentences shot off quickly; posts like that now get passed over without a second glance. Photos and videos help โbreakโ our automatic scrolling habits, so if your post doesnโt have one or the other, itโs likely to almost literally fade into the background of our newsfeeds. This is why platforms like Instagram and TikTok are built from the foundation to require photos and videos, respectively!
Great content doesnโt always have to be perfectly perfect, either. While professionally shot and edited photos and videos can be wonderful for your branding, you can get just as much engagement from behind-the-scenes photos, quick and casual videos, and other types of posts that offer something that captures peoplesโ attention can be fantastic for engaging your followers.
Stay timely and topical
As a general rule, social media platforms tend to create and follow particular cultural conversations. News stories, large events, current trends, these all drive interaction between social media users, and it makes good business sense to find natural ways to become part of a broader conversation that drives interest, gets people to comment and share, and expands your brandโs reach.
Having said this, itโs important to be incredibly careful and targeted in what sorts of conversations and trends your business posts about. Weโve all seen businesses make themselves look foolish, out-of-touch, or even offensive by wading into topics they have no business or need to be a part of, and you donโt want that to be you. Instead, smart business operators have a keen sense of whatโs interesting and good for their company to post about: current industry trends, local neighborhood events, causes important to the staff, and ownership; these can all be fodder for social posts that engage your community and your followers.
Avoid the hard sell
Have you noticed something about these suggestions so far? None of them have had anything to do with posting your products or services! People like social media because it feels social, and not like theyโre just flipping through a digital magazine. The most successful social media brands donโt build an engaged following by posting nothing but advertising; they share content thatโs meaningful and interesting to their followers, even if it doesnโt directly push for more sales.
There is a place for the hard sell in your social feed, but it should be minimal. Perhaps the most famous rule of thumb is the 70/20/10 rule, which outlines a great starting point for the types of content you post:ย
- 70% of your content should be building your brand. This means sharing info that addresses your followersโ questions and concerns, adding to topical conversations about your industry, showing off what makes your business unique, and more.
- 20% of your content should be shared from other trusted sources. This could be business leaders you admire, local organizations or events, relevant journalism, or even admiring/complimentary posts from your own fans.
- 10% of your content should be directly about products, services, or promotions. This could be new product highlights, digital coupons, calls to action, and more.
This rule is not hard and fast, and every business finds its own balance and route to success. But itโs a great outline of the type of thinking that is rewarded with engagement and eventual sales success: spend most of your time making yourself a trusted source and building your community, so that the once in a blue moon that you do make that hard sell, your community turns out for you.
Understand the algorithm
Lastly, understand that every social media platform runs off of a unique algorithm. These sites and apps are not just digital bulletin boards, where people scan through everything thatโs posted and engage with what they like. Sometimes, just having high-quality content simply isnโt enough to breakthrough. Understand how the algorithms on your chosen platforms work (to the degree you can, as theyโre often very opaque) to help make your great posts rise to the top. Know when your audience is most active, and what types of content they engage most with. Make sure you arenโt using words or phrases that will get flagged and suppressed by the algorithm. Create a content calendar that isnโt posting too much or too little for your preferred platform. If you know how to play the game, then your posts are far more likely to get far more engagement.
If youโd rather focus on the day-to-day of running a successful business than on meticulously crafting that perfect post, Skol Marketingโs team is here to help. For one-on-one guidance, help creating great content, or even full social media management, please donโt hesitate to contact the social media marketing experts at Skol Marketing.
