This post is inspired by a book “500 Social Media Marketing Tips: Essential Advice, Hints and Strategy for Business: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and More!” by Andrew Macarthy. Oh my, this is a huge title đ The book itself gives lots of practical ideas how to promote on social media. If you´re about to post some content to your FB page, you probably want to know what is the best to attract your fans or even potential customers. It is good to know what to do to engage with them. Here are some tips I collected from the book:
1. Engage with discussions & ask questions
I think what you dont´t want to do is to make your audience bored. Engage with them by asking questions. Questions can be related to your business, service or products you offer.
The most favourite type of questions:
A; are those about preference : “Do you prefer product A or product B?”
B: Yes and No questions : “Do you like our new website?”
C: Questions about opinions : “What´s your favourite feature of our product?”
D: Or the ones that challenge your fans : “We are hosting a party this Friday – guess where?”
It is also important to know when to ask these questions. Buddy Media made a study that posing a questions at the end of the post can increase the engagement up to 15 % compared to employing the question somewhere in the middle.
2. Use “fill in the blanks” updates
To encourage the level of engagement, ask people to fill in the blank space to answer your question. It not only can be engaging but also helpful for yourself, in case you´re asking some question to help you with your fans´needs. Example: ” If you could choose a colour of our new product, it would be ________.”
3. Use tease contentÂ
Tease your fans by wanting them to see the content and click on link you share. E.g.: We have a solution for your long-term problem…(your link).”
4. Use hashtags # and @ symbol to boost engagement
Hashtags appear as clickable links in posts, they allow you to group similar types of content together. You can create it simply by typing a hash or pound symbol directly before a word. E.g.: “Check our new book # Get rid of Performance Appraisals!” When you click on hashtag, it will open up a feed where you´ll see other people posts with same hashtag.
When you reply to your fans´comments, use @username to address each person individually. Using @ can be also used when you want to promote another FB page in return of them promoting you. E.g. “Thank you for @sponsor for sponsoring our book”. The tagged page – in this case “sponsor” will appear to people that follow this tagged page and this in return may get some traffic back to your own FB page.
5. Post pictures of your customers enjoying your products or services
This is powerful way of transferring your current customers into your fans.  You can do it yourself or even better – allow users to submit pictures. You can allow them to tag your page in their photo albums, this way is easy for you to save the tagged picture and share it on your FB page. This way you´re making your fan feel special. One cool way to share photos is using Flipagram (www.flipagram.com), you can convert your pictures in a form of video to entertain your fans.
6. Share a special offer, events or discount code
If you are in a stage when you can really afford to make several campaigns and offer your fans some special offers, please do it! Try to use your imagination to deliver some promotion, offer something for free, people will love it.
7. Asks for Likes and Shares
It is allowed you ask users to Like and Share your content but do it appropriately. Do not appear desperate by doing it too often . Buddy Media recommends to use these action words: “like”, “tell us”, “comment”, “post”, “submit”.
8. Engage with the comments frequently
If someone comments on a status update or posts a public message on your wall, be sure to reply within certain amount of time, the best asap. Please, do not ignore your negative comments, on the other hand ,try to respond them and make a good impression.
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