Engagement Tips on Social Media for Small Business Owners
Let’s be honest here, there is no magic formula to doing ‘engagement’ on social media platforms. People that tell you that really are just trying to sell you something. If you are being social within your niche and community, there are going to be good results. The key to making your engagement worth the time you are putting in is to know what not to do and what ways to keep it efficient. After digging through all the BS of other social media management platforms, here is what I have found to be the consensus and what I practice with my clients.
(If you want the quick and dirty, you can download the PDF version here.)
What You Could Be Doing Wrong
Your niche is going to be your holy grail. Whatever you think your corner of the market is, make it narrower. Go deeper than you think. The biggest mistake I see people making is engaging with accounts outside of their target market and niche. This is a massive waste of your time. Why? Because these people are never going to buy your product or want your service. The number one part of getting people to enter your sales funnel is addressing a need that they are experiencing. If they do not have a need, you are selling your stuff to the wrong people.
That being said, if you are not tracking your competition and parallel accounts; you need to start.
Tracking how they are interacting, what trends they are following, and what you could be doing better in comparison is always a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of the community. The difference between a parallel and a competitive account is their relationship to you and your services. Obviously, your direct competition is going to be those who offer the same service to your target market. Parallel accounts are going to be those that are still within your niche but do not offer the exact services as you. These can also be complementary companies that offer services that complement those that you offer. All that being said, you need to keep track of the top accounts in both of these categories.
Forgotten Steps
Missing Comments
You can get going with your engagement and start liking posts like you would on your regular feed without leaving behind a comment. That like is useless without a comment, friends. The idea of leaving your two cents behind is that the account itself will be able to see you and also those that are active on their page. This means that you are tapping into their audience as well to make them curious about your own page. It’s about getting opportunities for them to leave social platforms to go to your services or purchase your products as soon as they see you. By doing this, you are opening up one more opportunity for them to reach that point.
Missing Their Tag
Whether you are sharing another person’s post to your story or your feed, you must not forget the tag. Yes, you may be posting it for the content, but you are also posting to tap into their audience. If you can get them to reshare on their story, their most engaged portion of their audience is going to see it. Doing this also helps to build a network with those accounts I was talking about before. The more you can integrate yourself into the community, the better off you are going to be.
Forgetting Your Own Customers Awareness Level
In the hunt for growth, we can forget that we have people right here and now that are following us. Not all of them are paying clients yet, but we still need to be addressing their levels of interest within the sale funnel as we are posting and engaging. If you haven’t yet taken a look at the 5 levels of customer awareness, here is a great infographic that illustrates it! How you are addressing your customers is determined by these levels of awareness.
Be sure you are tapping into all of those levels throughout your time on the app. And for those that tend to interact quite a bit, be sure and interact back if you can. It really reinforces the relationship and that your brand really does care about its customers. You can read more about these customer awareness levels here.
Time Saving Structure
We all know that time is money. You do not need to get sucked into social media for hours at a time every day. Set up structures around that time so that you are setting yourself up for success. Some people are great at intuitively knowing when to stop. For others, setting up a checklist each time you go through until you are confident can really help. There are methods like the Dollar Eighty that can provide that structure or you can simply say you will interact with 10 of the most recent and top posts in a given category.
If you don’t want it to be that structured, just set a timer for yourself and get off when the timer goes off. Even I find myself getting sucked into my clients’ feeds every once in a while, so this helps me big time! I set mine for either 15 minutes in the morning and at night or 30 minutes once in the mornings to respond to comments, comment on others, and share something from the community. Following the niche hashtags and working my way through those as well as the topic-specific ones for the day keeps what I’m doing effective and focused each time.
When you don’t have time, get help!
What is great about social media management like mine is that we can tailor our services to fit your needs exactly. It can also be extremely cost-effective when you factor in the time that you could be wasting on it out of your day. Some people really love to do this part for themselves, but for those of you that don’t, I have your back!
You can chat with me for free for 30 minutes to talk about what you may be struggling with. I am happy to point you in the right direction without any commitment. At the end of the day, engagement on social media doesn’t have to be scary or formulaic to be successful. A little bit every day goes a long way!
