Followers, reactions, shares, and comments don’t come easy even for the biggest accounts and profiles on different social media. Setting up a social media profile is the easy part but running it successfully demands an effective strategy. You can bet that large brands and celebrities have teams of people tending solely to that.

This is why you need to choose one to make your profile(s) more tempting to engage your followers so they can freely express their opinions and emotions. With that in mind, here are a few proven strategies for you to consider.

Set clear goals

Any venture should commence with setting goals so that you can come up with a plan on how to most effectively achieve them. If you are uncertain about this step due to a lack of experience, to ensure that the goals you set are entirely in accordance with your business aspirations and abilities, it is best to embrace the SMART goal-setting strategy.

This strategy is, in fact, an acronym that refers to the need for goals to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-based. For example, the more specific your goals are, the better - instead of wishing for more Instagram followers to raise awareness about your brand, set a timeframe and an approximate number of followers you wish to attract. Having a measurable outcome will help you monitor the situation and adapt the strategy if necessary.

Get to know your audience

Once you know what you wish to achieve, you can dedicate your time to finding the optimal manners to reach those goals. One crucial element that needs to be taken into account and without which no strategy would make sense is your audience. To get them to engage with your brand, you need to evoke a reaction in some way and that is not an easy task considering the amount of social media posts they see every day.

You are in possession of many data but the trick is to know how to make use of them properly. If you notice that posting videos gets more people to react and comment on the post, you should leverage that and make the video the dominant format. If your audience mostly consists of younger generations, explore how that portion of your audience interacts with your social media posts and try to copy those patterns and implement them more frequently.

Insist on quality posting

It is no secret that to be ranked high among search engine results, you need to work hard on your content. Reaching those heights is a marathon, not a sprint and it is necessary to constantly come up with optimized content of good quality. This content is then shared across your brand’s social media profiles to boost engagement.

However, creating this kind of content is not a walk in the park and it takes a lot of resources to achieve that stable level of quality. This is why far-sighted business owners often rely on professional white-label SEO services to create content that inspires people to read. Google, as one of the most relevant search engines, will also find such content to be of quality, by which it gains authority and increases search engine rankings and customer engagement.

Maintain regular activities

Consistency is not important only in terms of content quality but also post scheduling and responding to all comments. Avoid having long silence periods during which you don’t post anything or don’t reach to your audience in any manner. They may see your brand as unprofessional which will lead to them stopping any interaction with your profiles.

When it comes to comments, it is best to answer them as soon as possible, and under no circumstances should you disregard the negative ones, especially if you strive for transparency. Also, one of the best recipes for engaging with the audience is to use their posts, which is user-generated content. Share some inspiring stories presented in pictures and videos and don’t omit to tag the creator: you will soon notice an increase in similar user-generated content once the audience learns you communicate with your customers directly, regularly, and with great enthusiasm.

Get involved in a social issue

Just stop and think: who is in a better position to raise awareness about a cause than a brand that has a large base of followers on social media? Somehow the important things slip off our radar and instead, we end up discussing and sharing mundane content simply because it is easier. What’s harder is to take a stand for things that matter.

Naturally, you have to be careful about the cause you will support because you can stir up negative comments and sentiments but the opposite reactions will make it worth it. Such a decision can touch people on a deeper level and one research has shown that around 75% of interviewees are keen on purchasing from a brand that supports a cause they agree with. If your interest in a particular issue is genuine, then adding your voice to that social movement can not only bring you personal satisfaction but a rise in the number of social media followers and customers.

Wrapping up

When trying to draw the attention of your audience and engage them, you need to remember that their minds are almost always busy. When they are not thinking about work, they are chatting with their friends online, googling for information or scrolling down the newsfeed on their social media profiles. They are surrounded by so much information that to engage them, you will need to put in some extra effort.

You have to understand your business needs, as well as your audience’s needs and ensure that the content is worth their time. These strategies have worked out well for other companies so you should consider applying them to your own business.