The key aim of any social media marketing campaign should be to build engagement. This means that your followers interact with your posts – they comment, they like them, they share them and so on. You also need to send them back to your website and you need to increase your profits! However, this all starts with engagement.
So if you’re automating your social media posts, how do you make sure that people actually engage with your posts? It really isn’t enough to just schedule all your posts, sit back and hope that your efforts pay off. You’ll be wasting your time if you don’t take extra measures to make sure people engage.
Here are some ways to make sure people respond to what you’re posting:
Use a Mixture of Text and Images
Text posts are fine, but statistics show that people really love images on social media. Thankfully it’s easy to schedule visual updates, and links to videos, as well as written messages.
Ask Questions
Automating your social media posts makes it even more risky that you’ll come across as a robot with no personality. Don’t be afraid to post light-hearted posts that you find entertaining, share that funny meme, or even talk about things that happened in your personal life. People respond better to real people than faceless brands.
You want to make sure that one in every few posts is a question. Nothing too deep, nothing too personal – keep them short and easy to answer. Questions really do get people commenting and sharing! To increase the chances of getting an answer, don’t ask open questions. Instead, give your followers a few specific answer choices.
Include Some Personality
Automating your social media posts makes it even more risky that you’ll come across as a robot with no personality. Don’t be afraid to post light-hearted posts that you find entertaining, share that funny meme, or even talk about things that happened in your personal life. People respond better to real people than faceless brands.
Don’t Make it All About You
Make sure your posts aren’t all about you and what you’re up to. Ask your followers questions, inspire them, and give them tips to improve their lives in some way. Many successful social media marketers also make a point to welcome new followers, or thank followers by name when their posts get shared.
Don’t Focus on Selling
Marketers that get the best response on social media are those that focus on building relationships with people and sharing content from a variety of sources. Don’t constantly push your own links and try to sell to people – leave this to your website which people will hopefully click through to once they’re engaged with your social media updates!
I’m not saying don’t sell…. Definitely sell. Make offers that make sense for your audience. Ask for the sale, absolutely. But also make sure you’re giving value on social media. I’m sure you’ve heard about the 80/20 rule a million times over, but it really is a good guideline for keeping the balance.
Post Consistently
If you’re automating your social media posts then it’s much, much easier to post on a consistent basis. You want to make sure that your followers see your updates. Remember to post at different times of day, especially if you have a global audience.
Many social networks also have stats you can look at to see the most active times of day for your audience (Facebook and Instagram seem to have a good grasp on this) so you can post or repost things at that time for the best chance of engagement.
You Need to Respond!
People are not going to engage with your posts if you’re never around to respond to what they say. Automation does mean you can login to your social media accounts less, but you can’t forget to login completely.
Take Your Time
Remember, if your social media accounts are still new then it’s going to take time to build up that loyal following. Just remember to keep working at it, even if you only have 50 followers. If you do it right, those followers can help you grow your following by sharing your posts with their followers.
You Can’t Automate Everything! (and that’s okay)
Remember that automation is a tool to help you, but it can’t be running the ship 100% of the time. Use automation to handle the repetitive tasks so that you have more time to do the fun engagement parts of social media.
