What is the best thing about social selling? You can do it anytime and anywhere. However, this does not mean that posting once in a blue moon about a special deal you are promoting is going to get the results you want. The reason that social selling is getting higher results than any other sales approach is that more goes into it than just creating a sales pitch. To increase engagement effectively, you need to be consistent. But the good news is that you don’t even have to move from where you are right now to find your next lead.
So, sit back, relax and learn the key to increasing engagement on social media…
Structure of Posts
When it comes to any type of content, the structure should be the first thing you think about to increase engagement. Yet, it usually ends up at the bottom of people’s checklists. Surely something so technical won’t be the deciding factor between high or low engagement? Without the right structure, you are practically setting yourself up to fail with any content you are posting on social media.
Of course, the way in which you structure your content can depend entirely on the social media platform you are posting on. You have to take into account character limits for a number of reasons. The main reason is that some social media platforms will limit just how much copy you can post. However, character limits are also a good indicator of how people will be consuming your content. For example, Twitter has a character limit of only 280 whereas LinkedIn allows up to 3000 characters. This means that if you were posting on Twitter, you would be better creating content that is quick and easy to consume. Whereas LinkedIn allows a bit more variety in the type of content you can create, which in turn helps to increase engagement.
No matter where are posting, you want to make sure that your content does not overwhelm people. So, even if you are on LinkedIn and using up all those 3000 characters, give each of your sentences a line of their own. It creates a much more pleasant and less intimidating experience for anyone who comes across your post. Most importantly, those first two lines of your post need to pull people in.
While images and videos are a great way to do this, depending on how you open your post, you can accomplish the exact same with just text. Make sure to give the beginning of any post some extra thought but don’t become a social media troll and post something completely irrelevant. This will quickly have the opposite effect of what you are aiming for with your engagement.
Type of Content
Even somewhere like LinkedIn does not have to be solely business-focused. Whilst yes, all your social media posts to some degree should benefit your sales reach, they do not all have to be hard sell orientated. Sharing a mixture of content is a great way to showcase both your business and yourself as an individual. The thing that separates social selling from any other sales approach is the opportunity to create a real connection with your customers. This can be done in a variety of ways, which will ultimately help increase engagement.
Business-focused content:
- Industry tips
- Events
- Company milestones
- Special deals/promotions
Engagement focused content:
- Industry-related news
- Personal news
- Hobbies
- Interests
Keeping an eye on trending topics and news is also a great way to invite more people into your content. You want your content to be creating discussions and encouraging people to interact through either likes or comments, which will help increase engagement.
Interact, Reply and Engage
The number one rule to increasing engagement on social media is never to post and dash. Even if you get lucky and one of your posts goes viral, you will not get any of the benefits if you do not continue to interact on whichever social media platform you are using. Something as simple as reading and replying to comments will help you turn these engagements into a potential sale.
So, when you are creating your content, make sure to include open questions that invite this engagement. This way your audience will find both your posts and you more approachable which makes it much more likely that they will continue to interact with your posts in the future. Hashtags will also help you to reach further across social media platforms but this does not mean you have to overload your posts with them. Instead of quantity, check quality. Look through hashtags relevant to your industry and see which ones have the most followers. Those are the ones that will send your engagement soaring and ultimately increase engagement.
