Let’s start with some eye-opening stats: more than 3.5 billion users are on social media, and typical users spend at least two hours scrolling through their feeds each day. The staggering numbers make it safe for us to say that social media has become part of our daily routine.

As more and more users are glued to their feeds, savvy marketers leave no stone unturned in the search for effective ways to engage and make them stick around their brands on social media platforms.

However, the catch is that there is too much social content for them, so they have endless options about what they want to consume. In other words, attracting their attention isn’t a cakewalk.

In the battle of eyeballs, you need your own unique social strategy to build an engaged social audience so you can easily make them convert into your local customers.

To help you out, we’ve listed some best strategies to make your social media profiles stand out and continue to grow your social media audience.

Let’s dive in!

#1. Create Thought-Provoking Content

As it is slightly mentioned above, social users are constantly bombarded with tons of content, and it means that they always have bigger fish to fry. In this case, it’s crucial to be the biggest feed on the “flood” by creating interactive, thought-provoking content.

Those kinds of content are the reasons for your audience to keep coming back for more. Make sure you produce content that provides value to your audience. Avoid creating over-promotional content because it can look like hard-selling ads.

Don’t hesitate just to give your in-depth, heavily researched, time-intensive content away to your audience. In exchange, you’ll get a more engaged social audience as well as an increased online presence.

#2. Implement Videos

If the content is king, then videos must be the crown jewel. This highly-engaging medium is becoming the most popular content type on social media. According to the latest video marketing statistics, users watch at least 1 billion hours of video content on YouTube alone!

The allure of social videos is quite simple: in the flood of content that most of them might seem impersonal, seeing a person’s face and hearing them talking is different and much more meaningful.

What’s more, social videos are incredibly shareable. It gets shared 1200% more than text and images combined, making it easier for you to expand your social audience and engage them in no time.

#3. Explore and Utilize All The Features

No social media is created similarly. Each of them has specific features and unique purposes that can appeal to the users. So, make sure you take advantage of all of the social media features you’re using.

For instance, use the Insights that Instagram offers. It can help you to understand how your posts are performing. Or, you can go live streaming on Facebook, Instagram, even YouTube. Just try to be as proactive with the features as possible. It’ll help you engage and appeal to the audience in many different ways.

#4. Listen And Be Responsive

You want your audience to interact with your content, don’t you? In this case, you need to remember that you must be as responsive and communicative as you can possibly be. 

It means that once your social audience leaves a comment or DM you to ask questions, make sure you always reply and give feedback to them.

It takes effort for them to interact and connect with your content by leaving a comment on it. So, don’t ever take it for granted and leave them hanging, or you’ll lose them.

#5. Stay Updated With The Latest Trends

In the fast-paced, ever-changing world of social media, you need to be always on to engage your audience. Try to always keep an eye on trends that make your social audience excited and hype for. It’s probably the easiest way to cut through the digital noise and catch their attention.

That way, you can create relatable content that they really want to see. It’s crucial to include the currently trending pop culture, holiday events, or viral memes that can all be great excuses for a post. That’s how you get a massive opportunity to connect with your social audience in a timely way instantly.

#6. Encourage Sharing

The more your content gets shared, the higher your chances to appeal to a broader audience. By all means, you have bigger opportunities to engage in more social audiences. That’s why besides creating highly-valuable content, always encourage your audience to share it with their social network.

You can also use tools like WP Social Sharing, Image Sharer, Shareaholic, and more. They can help you to make it as easy as possible for the audience to share your content on their social media profiles at just their fingertips.

#7. Consistency Is Key

Rome wasn’t built in a day — neither is your engaged social audience. It takes time and patience. Here, you can say that consistency is key. By posting content consistently and frequently to social media, you’ll not only build a loyal social audience but also strengthen your brand image.

While constantly creating new content might be overwhelming at some point, you can always repurpose the existing content into new formats.

#8. Consider Paid Social

If you want to see a quick, visible result, you might want to spend some bucks for paid social. It doesn’t mean you have to buy fake followers just to have a big follower count. Even with massive numbers, you won’t get the engagement you want. That’s because they aren’t real eyeballs and merely just inactive accounts. 

Paid social advertising here is to promote your content, so your social audiences can easily see it. For example, if you go for Facebook ads, there are some advanced features to help you in reaching just the right people with your paid outreach. This way, you can seamlessly maximize content exposure, increase conversions, and help you reach new people.

Signing Off

Social marketing is all about sharing and building a solid relationship with your audience first, not hard-selling. Building your engaged social media isn’t all smooth sailing. But with those eight handy tips above, you’ve now got more insights on how to win your social audience’s attention. Also, there’s one more thing you can also consider when it comes to engaging social media audiences; it never hurts to talk to them in such a friendly, casual way — just like how you talk to your old friends. It helps them to feel more comfortable and familiar with your brand.

Author

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award-winning explainer video company. He helps businesses increase conversion rates, close more sales, and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).