Affiliate marketing is heavily tied with social media. To drive traffic to your links you need to have a high social media engagement to entice users to visit, but also to increase your social media networks.
Over the past year organic reach of social media posts have been steadily declining. What this means is paid advertising is slowly becoming the best way to reach your audience, which means spending money.
But before you run for your credit card and start pumping money into advertising and promoting posts, there are some simple hacks you can employ to books your social media engagement!
1. Use Community Outreach
One easy way to boost your social media engagement is to use community outreach. Your community want to see a real face to your content, and like to be able to engage with you. Whether you do live Q&A events on Facebook, or Live Stream a YouTube video you can create and foster a social environment, interact with guests and create a loyal following.
The added benefit of community outreach is regardless of the algorithm changes to your social media platform, you will still ensure you have a highly engaging account. Sometimes its hard to keep up with the changes of the social media channels and you may find your content dropping in views.
But with live events and outreach, you will have an engaged following who WANT to see your content, and don’t just see it appears on their feed. That is ultimately what you want, people who actively check your account to look for new content.
2. Use Emojis
As weird as it may seem, emojis are proven to boost social media engagement – who would a thought a little wink here and there would be so useful! Arne Giske, the founder of FB groups for Business, suggests “think of your content as a toast, but using emojis is like adding butter. Because most social media posts don’t use emojis, emojis can really help to stop people from scrolling away from your content”.
Interestingly the green tick emoji is the same colour as the green shade of iPhone messages, which subconsciously prompts users to read. So throw in ticks, and some well placed emoticons to get people to stop and read
3. Maintain your brand’s personality
Have you ever started following a page or an account because of some great posts, only to be bombarded with different content that you have no interest in?
It is important your content consistently aligns with your established brand personality. Your followers connected with you due to a mutual interest in what you are promoting. To encourage their social media engagement with you, you need to ensure you keep serving them the content they want. GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT!
4. Use GIF’s in comments
GIF’s are an incredibly simple way of boosting social media engagement with minimal effort. Have you ever been scrolling through comments and come across a group of funny GIF’s?
GIF’s are generally cute or funny, or reference well know movies and tv shows. People actively stop to look at the content of the GIF and quite often will try and “one up” the other user by posting another GIF in response.
One simple well placed GIF in a comments section can start a chain reaction of funny and engaging GIF responses. Not only is this a way great to boost your social media engagement, but it also stacks the positive comments on your posts in your favour.
Social media algorithms consider negative and positive reactions to content when ranking them. The more positive reactions you can get, the better!
5. Boost Social Media Engagement With Crowd Participation!
Simple. Ask a question! People love to talk about themselves, and share their stories. Social media is about one thing, social interactions where people can engage and share their content, thoughts, ideas and experiences.
By asking a simple thought provoking question your followers will find it hard to resist putting their 2 cents worth in. Everyone want’s to be heard, just give them the opportunity.
Besides boosting social media engagement it is a great way to understand and gain insights into your audience. Your questions may serve to get your followers talking, but if you are strategic in what you ask, it can help shape your content to be more targeted to what they desire.
6. Change, Adapt and Embrace New Features
Social media platforms are constantly bringing out new features and ways to engage your followers. Every time they do this, they undoubtedly change their algorithms to incorporate these new features. In doing so, your current method will be diluted, so you have to embrace the changes.
This may force you to go outside your comfort zone, for example Instagram’s IGTV forcing you to push video content. But your followers are inquisitive, and will be checking out the features as quickly as they are brought out, so don’t miss the boat!
7. Don’t Always Sell
Pushing your products and offerings may be the entire point of your social channels, but your followers want some diversity. If you constantly promote to them, they will lose interest and look elsewhere.
You want to establish an emotional connection with your followers to promote trust and loyalty. Whether its a relatable post about the upcoming weekend, and entertaining video you share or just some inspiration, your followers want something real.
You Are Now A Social Media Master!
So now you know how to boost your social media engagement, but what about ads, content, how often to post….and just basically where to start? I have a great post on frequency, Social Media Posts – How Much Is Too Much? but if I were to suggest anything it would be to check out the Marketers Club below.
You can start learning all the in’s and outs to market and promote your business, while having your own business advisory answer any questions. The very first thing you should do, is take the 15 day business challenge. It will take you through everything you need to know about setting up a successful online business, and get you making money online far sooner!