Social Media Strategy – it’s time to get engaged.

The Marketing Collective's Social Media Strategy :Top Tips for Social Engagement.

Imagine the world today without the Internet ... imagine the world today without Social Media! It is quite astonishing how Social Media has changed society and how sending a tweet can get you seen by millions of people or by simply re-tweeting can win you a 7 night all inclusive holiday.But how do you ensure that your messages and your conversations are engaging and interesting? You need to ask yourself these questions:- ENGAGE: What are you trying to tell people?- LISTEN: What do you want people to tell you?- LEARN: What will learn from the information that you gather, and what will you do with it?Social media is a two way process and you need to ensure that you are listening as well as speaking. What do your visitors want to see or want to know? Your target audience is in the heart of everything you do, so you need to tailor your posts to them. Is your content going to make a difference to them? Who is sharing your content? Why are they sharing your content? To get your content shared, you need to understand your audience.Ensuring that you have a Social Media strategy and plan allows you to understand who you are speaking to so you can cater your messages and updates to suit them - which leads to, you guessed it, engagement!Here is our 5 top tips for how to manage and increase engagement1) Create a social media plan for the year and break it down into months- Research major world events taking place and also your local city events and how can you tie your posts into these events? You do not want to be portrayed as a robot just sending out messages, you are a human who interacts and has conversations.2) Actively search for conversations that are already happening on Twitter and join in on them! Even better if you can add value to that conversation or solve a problem.3) Use visuals as often as you can to instantly appear more appealing to your audience, which will then increase the chances of getting your content shared.4) Make the call to action as obvious as possibleWhether you want them to retweet, share or favourite. Ensure you make this clear to help improve engagement and sharing of content.5) Ensure that you respond immediately to your followersWe expect to have a response within an hour on Twitter and if you are replying to your followers, you will keep them and potential followers happy. Oh and it shows once again that you are not a robot and can have a conversation!