These days it doesn’t matter how many social channels you have and how much content you produce, we are all fighting for social share and engagement. I might even go so far as to say that producing the content is the easy bit, getting people to view it and engage with it, that’s where the hard work starts.
Why? Well because organic reach is falling on pretty much every social platform on the web. Meaning that creating content that people will engage with and share on social media is a bigger job than simply posting onto your channel.
So what is the formula to gaining social media engagement on multiple platforms?
### Insight fuelled content creation
It starts with what you’re going to post – your content. And great content will be created based on insight. Knowing what your audience are likely to engage with and creating social media posts with this in mind is a good starting position.
You then need to turn that insight into content that is social media worthy. It’s important to remember that people don’t go to social media to engage with brands, so understand that your content, be that imagery, video, infographs or similar, won’t warrant engagement if they are plastered with calls to actions, brand logos and sales messages.
### Content adjustment
The next stage is deciding where the most appropriate place for your content to be shared is. Just because you own five social channels does not necessarily mean that your content will go viral on each and every one of those channels without perhaps some adjustments so that it fits on a given platform appropriately. For example, a meme may be great on Facebook and Twitter but it’s unlikely to be the best form of content for Linkedin but you could think about the essence of the content, and tweak it into something slightly different for each of your channels. Your insight should show you that different audiences live on different channels and you should understand what will make them tick on each.
By now you’ve developed your content, chosen your channels, adjusted where necessary and posted. The likelihood is that by just posting on your channels you still aren’t seeing the levels of engagement for your content that you were expecting, I mean it was no doubt a brilliant piece of social gold. Well I am here to say that that’s completely normal. Regardless of what you post you probably won’t be seeing engagement levels anywhere near what you were expecting for the size of your audience.
### Investment
That’s where the final part of the formula comes in, and that comes in the form of monetary investment. Increasingly channels are requiring some form of investment in pages in order to increase social reach of posts to your audience or a wider audience with your chosen demographics. Surprisingly to some, even the most minimal of investments on a channel such as Facebook, we’re talking £13, can expose your content to several thousand people.
And hey, what’s £13 when you know that people will love the content you have produced? You’ve taken the time to create it, so now you want people to see. Aside from additional monetary investment you’re also going to have to invest a little more time. Time to outreach your content to relevant stakeholders on different channels and various groups and forums across the website. Done well this should result in an increase in engagement, but no one is promising your post will go viral.
A combination of the above – insight fuelled content creation, content adjustment, investment in money and time – should show a steady increase in reaching those hard to get fans and followers in a world where organic reach is becoming harder and harder to achieve.