7 Steps To Better Social Media Engagement

What makes for successful social media engagement?

Most days, I am a Ping-Pong ball between Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, and Pinterest. The social-verse is exciting, ever shifting, and never sleeping, which motivates me to strive for highly engaging posts; producing quality over quantity in order to standout.

The following seven steps have allowed me to be more successful with my posts and have led to better social media engagement:

1. Beef up all of your social media profiles.
Searches pick up on key words and that includes words listed in your social media profiles. Chisel out time to go through each of your profiles and fill out all of the information, inject key words, and inter-connect them where possible.

2. Be visually appealing.

A best practice is to have custom photos on all of your social media profiles. For example, if you still have the common Twitter background, figure out what you need to do to create a branded one. Also, post photos frequently on all profiles.

3. Make an editorial calendar.
Build a social media editorial calendar that followers can count on. Many brands establish themed days (e.g. wisdom Wednesdays highlight quotes and inspiring posts, or video Fridays, etc.).

4. Cross-promote.
As much as possible, hashtag, tag others, mention others, connect with others; strive to constantly expand the reach and breadth of your posts by including others.

5. Change up your cover photos.
Periodically change your cover photos on LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. When you do, it shows up in peoples’ newsfeed.

6. Engage yourself.

You also have to engage. I commit to 3 groups on LinkedIn, 3 groups on Facebook, and 2 communities on Google+ that I consistently follow and engage with. Whether it’s a comment or submission, it is a great way to expose my brand and myself and directly engage with others.

7. Stay up to speed.
Pick your medium of choice (blog subscriptions, a Twitter list with influential social media marketers, books, etc.) and stay up on the latest trends in social media. I make it my business to read one Hubspot guide a weekend to learn about the latest updates and features on various social media platforms, as well as the best practices on how to use each one for business.

If you’re not doing any of these, implement one a week to, realistically, do all of them well. If you’re doing some, then keep moving forward. Also, measure your post engagement after implementing some or all of these steps to determine what is working best for you and your business.

-Jamie