As a small business owner, you want to use social media to shove your sales pitch and bring about an increase in sales.
After all, when you consider how many of your prospects and customers use social media, it’s difficult not to get excited.
However, marketing through social media can be an endless, round-the-clock job that can quickly drain your energy and hold you back from carrying out more important tasks related to your core business.
When tracking your social media, it’s easy to get swept up in activities that eat up your time, such as reading what your customers are saying about you and answering their inquiries.
It doesn’t take long before you find yourself falling down the rabbit hole of endlessly scrolling through your social media to analyse each comment you get on your posts and check out the posts and comments on your competitors’ pages.
Safe to say, social media is the holy grail of marketing. But instead of wasting your time, you should rather use some smart hacks (like the ones provided in this post) to take the pulse of your audience and increase engagement without investing substantial time and effort.
With that being said, let’s explore the most effective ways to drive social media engagement and increase your followers in no time.
Table of contents:
- Batch content
- Harness the power of micro-influencers
- Arm yourself with the right social media tools
- Get more followers with S4S
- Use visual content to tell your story
- Use polls and contests to drive engagement
- Repurpose content
1. Batch Content
Have you ever heard of batching content?
Content batching is exactly what it sounds like – creating content in batches by setting aside some time to only focus on producing content.
In many ways, batching content is like baking ooey-gooey cookies – you need to gather your ingredients, follow a recipe, and bake a set of cookies at once (instead of baking each cookie at a time).
Essentially, all you need to do is spend time and create a week or a month’s worth of social media posts instead of creating one post at a time.
When you’re a crazy-busy business owner, every minute counts – not to mention that your customers come first, which means all the content you need to boost engagement comes second.
Luckily, content batching can save you time and help you avoid content creation burnout.
Start by setting some time aside to brainstorm your content. Then, take time to write the content you decided to cover. Finally, make sure you select visuals for your content (e.g., photos, videos, maps, charts, animations, etc.)
2. Harness the Power of Micro-Influencers
According to Mediakix, micro-influencers have anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 followers, while macro-influencers have accounts with 500,000 – 1,000,000 followers.
Being relatively ordinary people, micro-influencers are perceived as more genuine than celebrity influencers. They’re individuals who frequently share engaging social media content that goes above and beyond to impress their followers.
Especially for small businesses, tapping into micro-influencers can be a winning marketing strategy (even if there are many top brands using micro-influencer campaigns as well).
So, if you’re looking to quickly boost social media engagement and increase brand awareness, you should consider leveraging the power of micro-influencers.
Not only do micro-influencers cost far less than macro-influencers, but they also have access to niche communities and higher audience engagement rates.
According to Marketing Charts, micro-influencers have the highest engagement rates compared to other influencer types on Instagram (3.86%), YouTube (1.63%) and TikTok (17.96%).
3. Arm Yourself With the Right Social Media Tools
Want to stay on top of all your social media tasks?
There are many social media management tools that can help you save time, streamline workflows, and ensure your content reaches the right audience at the right time.
Here are some of the best tools for small-to-medium businesses you may want to add to your content marketing toolbox:
- Buffer – An extremely affordable tool that enables you to schedule content, get insights, and see all of your posts in one place. Their pricing plans start at just $5 per month.
- Agorapulse – An all-in-one social media platform that comes with unique features, such as Facebook contents apps and competitors analysis. Pricing plans start at $79 per month.
- Hootsuite – As one of the biggest social media management tools, Hootsuite is extremely popular for its tracking tools and analytics. Pricing plans start at $39 per month.
- Sendible – A social media management tool that enables you to integrate with 17 different platforms (including Canva, Google Drive, YouTube, and much more). Pricing plans start at €24 per month.
- Tailwind – A great social media tool for Pinterest and Instagram that enables you to schedule content, measure performance, monitor conversations, and much more. Pricing plans start at $9.99 per month.
- SocialPilot – An easy-to-use tool that allows you to easily find relevant content from several industries. They have a pricing plan for small teams (at $42.5 per month) that allows up to three users.
- SocialBee – A great social media management tool that comes with a unique feature – it enables you to recycle evergreen content by adding slight variations to your posts. Pricing plans start at $19 per month.
4. Get More Followers With S4S
Have you ever followed mentors and influencers on social media? If so, you might have noticed that many of them use #S4S hashtags.
S4S stands for “shoutout for shoutout.”
S4S is a social media hack where users support each other by posting each other’s content and suggesting followers follow the other account.
The S4S technique it’s free, fast, effective, and works on almost every social media platform.
Typically, S4S posts include pictures or videos from the account they’re shouting out.
For example, suppose you are running a kitchen supply store and find a social media account for recipes and cooking. In that case, you may agree with the owner of the account to give you a shoutout and invite their followers to visit your store by posting your materials with a link to your website.
On the other hand, you may invite your followers to check out the social media account you’ve got a shoutout from and learn some delicious recipes to cook at home.
5. Use Visual Content to Tell Your Story
Your target audience wants visually appealing pictures and not just a bunch of text.
Great visual content that tells a story about your brand is key to boosting engagement and increasing brand awareness.
Visual content (e.g., videos, photos, slide decks, screenshots, GIFs, infographics, etc.) is super effective on social media as it generates 94% more views. Put simply, visual content has the power to grab attention and communicate more information, more effectively.
For example, just a sneak-peek into operations around your office or live streaming can go a long way towards boosting engagement and capturing more leads.
One caveat, though. If you’re operating remotely without a physical office, you need to make sure that your followers see a professional workspace rather than your living area.
Even if your brand’s tone of voice is informal and friendly, operating from home lacks the built-in assumption that customers make that you’re a serious and professional businessperson.
So, if you’re running your business remotely, you may want to consider using virtual office space that provides you with all the tools you need to build a reliable image, including professional meeting rooms.
Virtual offices are affordable and cost-effective and enable you to work from anywhere while your clients, customers, and anyone who follows you on social media think you run a professional business in a prestigious location.
6. Use Polls and Contests to Drive Engagement
Social media polls and contests are a great way to drive engagement through participation and shares.
Use polls to create meaningful interactions with your audience. They are simple and fast for your followers to participate in and also have great benefits when it comes to learning about your target market.
Be sure to find a topic for your poll that is relevant to your audience and take the time to respond to the comments people leave. Also, be sure not to overdo it and bombard your audience with polls – it’ll become dull, repetitive, and ineffective.
You can also engage your audience by running contests on social media. Not only do they help you increase engagement and brand awareness, but they also help you collect rich data for your future marketing campaigns and increase your subscribers (by having them sign up using their email).
Here are a few creative social media contest ideas:
- Like and comment to win – Simply create a post and ask your followers to like and comment for a chance to win
- Tag a friend – Ask people to tag a friend in the comments section to enter the contest and have a chance to win the prize
- Follow to win – Ask your audience to follow you in order to enter the contest
- Selfie contest – Ask people to post a picture of themselves while using your product or service
- Trivia contest – Ask a question about your product and give a prize to the first person who gives the correct answer
- New product suggestions – Ask for suggestions about a new product and give a prize to the person who comes up with the best idea
7. Repurpose Content
Apart from saving you valuable time, repurposing high-performing content can also help you reinforce your brand’s messaging and give your posts an SEO boost.
When it comes to repurposing old content, your options are endless.
Here are a few methods to try out first:
- Reuse visuals in creative ways (e.g., use old pictures as background for quotes, use an old picture overlaid onto a new background, etc.)
- Share an old blog post that you’ve updated with new and relevant data
- If you already have long-form content including an incredible list of tips and tricks, you can break it up into a series of social media posts
- Turn your blog posts into videos
- Create Twitter threads based on takeaways from your blog posts
- Use already available content to design infographics
- Publish your old blog posts on LinkedIn articles
- Repurpose TikTok videos into Instagram Reels or Stories
- Turn takeaways from your blog posts into social media quote graphics
- Make a photo collage using pictures that you already have in your arsenal
Conclusion: Use the tips in this post to keep your social media safe from going stagnant and get more eyeballs on your content!
They will immensely benefit your small business by driving higher levels of user engagement, boosting brand awareness and positively impacting your marketing efforts and revenue.
Are you running a remote, home-based business? If you’re looking for clever ways to build a professional image online and get more leads on social media, B2B HQ can help you out. Get your virtual office in Melbourne today and see for yourself how a credible and professional business image can significantly strengthen your online presence and drive sales.
