Social media is an incredible tool for companies to promote their services and products. It’s an exceptional way to reach your target audience and be seen on a broader scale. However, it’s essential to evolve and stay current as social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and twitter drastically change their algorithms. The latest algorithm changes favour posts that receive a lot of engagement, and penalize accounts that consistently post, yet fail to engage with their audience. Social media continues to evolve; becoming more social, organic and interactive. It’s a living, collective online community that relies on engagement and interaction.
These new algorithms are being implemented as a way to encourage meaningful connections after studies revealed that actively engaging, liking, commenting and sharing posts have been linked to improving a user’s mood. Meanwhile less engaging accounts are being penalized in order to eliminate passive scrolling, which has been linked to feelings of isolation, depression and loneliness. It’s pretty impressive how passive interactions take a toll on us and thus these accounts are being seen less and less on social media news feeds as a result.
As social media platforms shift their focus towards accounts that demonstrate meaningful connections and active engagement, it’s essential your posts are adding value to users lives and not blasting them with sales gimmicks.
So how exactly do you capture your audience’s attention, promote your business and cultivate meaningful interaction?
Quality Curated Content
Capturing what makes an audience interact with your posts requires striking photography and quality content. Curating posts that incorporate striking, high-quality photography with high caliber content requires a creative mind and strong understanding of the target audience. Your followers are not interested in pixelated photography or poorly crafted content. Crafting quality captions means providing context, resonating with users on a deeper level and inspiring followers to take action.
Inspiring users to take action means crafting a call to action that drives engagement. The most effective way to inspire engagement is through a call to action. Verbs that encourage action, such as “explore”, “discover”, “learn” and “start” will prompt engagement and action. Curating this kind of content is requires a great deal of creativity and strategic planning.
Depending on your message, your caption can be short and sweet or long, in-depth personalized stories. Hashtags, emojis and words that drive users to take action, when used well, will enhance your written content.
Knowing your audience and delivering high-quality content that social media platform algorithms deem meaningful will broaden your scope. Once you’ve effectively engaged with your current following, Instagram’s algorithm will see that as a positive signal and boost your post so that other users can interact with your account.
Meaningful Connections with Your Ideal Customer
Narrowing in on a two or three specific customers that you consider your ideal user or customer and creating posts and content specifically for them will give your posts more depth. Every time your craft a post, you should be carefully designing it to captivate one of your specific ideal customers. This gives your content more depth, purpose and value.
By customizing posts to a few select individuals, you will successfully attract like-minded people that resonate with your specific ideal customer. Honing in on a few loyal individuals and creating well-rounded profiles is an excellent way to access better insight into who your potential customers are, and how to reach them.
The goal is to appeal to a greater audience that shares similar traits and attributes. Understanding what motivates, inspires and captivates a select few specific customers will attract the right people and help show that your social media account isn’t just a sales gimmick.
The bottom line – genuine connection is the best way to foster a loyal following that is inspired to connect and engage with your posts. However, building strong bonds with your followers and continuing to foster them takes a great deal of time and strategic planning.
Branding Voice that Resonates with Your Audience
Knowing what motivates, inspires and drives your audience is half the battle. Speaking to them on their level is the other half. A consistent and unique brand voice that resonates with your audience will help users identify with your brand on a personal level. The goal is to inspire them to be part of something bigger than themselves and that your brand gives them access to a certain lifestyle, feeling or community.
Cultivating a consistent and unique voice will help you access your desired audience and create a loyal following. The aim is to provide a lifestyle that just so so happens to incorporate your products or services. Your building a community of loyal followers that view your posts as adding value to their lives.
Disclosing Sponsored Posts
Honesty and transparency are absolutely essential! When companies do not disclose their sponsored or promotional posts clearly, it leaves users feeling annoyed and actually creates distance between you and your users. Being honest will help cultivate a stronger following. No one wants a feed full of “buy this product” posts, so distinguish those posts clearly to audiences if you include them in your feed.
Including hashtags such as #ad, #sponsored #product #promoting on any sponsored or specific product promoting posts, before the caption shortens and near the beginning, will position your company as genuine.
At the end of the day, building meaningful connections with users that view your company as something that adds value to their lives and not just a faceless business that blasts cheap sales tactics takes diligence and honesty.
