Get social media savvy: 5 ways to increase engagement

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Sarah Pincott shares five tips for businesses looking to better engage with their target audience on social media.


In the online world of real world, instant engagement, many businesses become exasperated when social media doesn’t yield immediate results. The web opens up a wonderful world of up-to-date news and information, endless ideas, and boundless opportunities for customer connection. Get your followers to stop scrolling and start interacting with our own quick tip guide for engagement in the social media sphere!

1. Let the visuals do the talking

We’ve all heard the saying ‘a picture tells a 1000 words’, and when scrolling through that same-same newsfeed, an eye-catching graphic can be the difference between ‘like’ and ignore.

Look out for free online creative tools to help you create personalised infographics and text overlayed images. This not only reduces your word count to a punchy, attention grabbing headline but it also allows a visual connection to shine through! Try Canva, a quick and easy online program with a bunch of social media layouts at the ready.

Side note: A great way to add human element to your brand is to share your workplace culture. Think photos of team building days or off sites!

2. Know your competition!

Ever heard the term ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’? Well social media can be the ideal place to fraternise with the competition.

When researching your target market, you should not only be looking to attract the right audience but to catch the eyes of thought leaders, key influences, and indirect competition in the industry. By sharing interesting content from their social media, you can increase their interest in your company while paving the way for collaboration opportunities in future (hello online industry networking).

3. Find the right audience

While you may be developing some stellar posts, is your hard work really paying off if you’re engaging with the wrong audience? It’s time to think about scale. An engaged, smaller or niche community of followers can provide a bigger pay off than a large-scale demographic.

Many promotional features, like Facebook’s ‘promoted post’, now work alongside tools to help target these niche markets. Find a new audience for your brand (based on age, location and interests) while attracting their interest.

So invest some $$ in these targeting features to foster longer-term engagement from an online community you didn’t even know existed.

4. Keep the conversation going
“Think of your community as collaborators – not an audience.”

– Cindy Au Director of Community, Kickstarter

Prompting your followers to stop scrolling and interact in more ways than a ‘like’ can be a difficult task. Providing your audience with a talking point is a great way to get the conversation started and let your audience drive your more creative content.

  • Include a call-to-action: Tell them what you want them to do! This can be as simple as a ‘sign-up now’ or ‘read more here’ prompt.
  • Create a poll or survey: Collect interesting perspectives and real time feedback on topics affecting your business. Survey Monkey is the go-to tool for surveys!
  • Run a competition: Try like and share or re-post competitions – they encourage your followers to share your content with new audiences.
  • Let there be links: Leave heavy, lengthy content to the news site and use quick links to information to keep your posts short. This is a great way to direct people to other platforms, like your website.
  • Be active online: People love recognition. Be personable and conversational by replying to posts and comments. 
  • Leverage current affairs: Sharing industry news can allow you to express your brand’s professional interests and opinions while attracting new or existing audiences to comment (just be careful not to be too political).

5. Never underestimate the hashtag

We may mock them, we may overuse them, or we may add one to every second word because ‘what the hey’, but understanding the art of the hashtag can be a powerful thing. Hashtags can help to identify the crux of your content, while bolding certain features in your text.

  • Add your personal hashtag to posts to create an online archive
  • Use relevant trending tags (e.g. recent event #chinesenewyear) to tie in with a bigger conversation and increase your reach
  • Understand which platforms are more hashtag-interactive, for example, Twitter and Instagram hashtags tend to be more effective than Facebook

By keeping these engagement tips in mind your company should be well on its way to perfecting its social media skills. Want more? Give us a call today on 07 3221 2220 to find out how we can help your business increase its social media engagement.