1. Post company photos to engage a visual culture.
Are you snapping photos all day long? That’s not a bad thing. In fact, you can use this impulse to your advantage by sharing those photos with your followers, and especially on Snapchat, or Pinterest, if applicable.
Just make sure that you get your business’ name in there, or even a CTA if it’s appropriate. Try taking a couple photos of your team, just doing their thing around the office, presenting kind of an online journal of daily operations at your company.
We all have a voyeuristic streak, so giving your followers a little glimpse of what goes on the inside could prove to be effective in engaging people.
2. Post interesting ideas as they come, and turn it into valuable content.
Any thought about your business that you think might be interesting to others—really, anything—take a second to post it on Twitter.
You’re a business owner; you can multitask. While you’re in the car or on the train, on your way to a meeting, and suddenly something brilliant comes to you—pull out your smartphone and post it! (Don’t Tweet and drive).
I’m not saying to give away proprietary secrets or anything, but people browsing or following you on Twitter may find your thoughts, random as they may seem, more interesting than you think.
3. Share and retweet quality posts.
Here’s a great way to jump in on the strength of someone else’s post and engage your own audience. If something inspires or delights you so much that you want to share or retweet it, then you absolutely should.
First of all, it’s just more active engagement with people on social, which is always good. More importantly, this is the whole idea behind social networking in the first place.
A lot of the things that people are posting are actually important things, or great ideas, and when you share it on your own page, then you’re joining the movement and pushing it further.
That’s what it’s all about, and if you can tap into the heart of social media, that is when it will become more effective for you and the business you are trying to promote.
4. Get in on the conversation.
The more that you put yourself out there, the more exposure you will gain for your business. The idea is this: You see something that piques your interest and you comment on it.
Then, you provide your own unique wisdom, and since anything on which you feel compelled to comment is likely to be related to your work, you’re casually marketing just by putting your company name on it.
5. Cultivate a real connection by using your personal accounts.
Any social media manager will encourage everybody on the team to share company posts on their personal accounts. This is mostly because it tends to hold a little more credibility and weight with people if they see a post on someone’s personal page, rather than on a business page. It just doesn’t feel as much like cold marketing.
Social media posting has to be human. It has to be natural and spread organically. The social media infatuation got to the point that it is now—misguided as it may be—because nobody was forcing anyone to say something, but instead, everyone engaged each other because they wanted to be involved with everyone else and have exciting conversations.
It’s supposed to be fun, and businesses are making it about calculated promotion. You will achieve the highest level of engagement when you tap into the human element of social media.
Stephanie
Stephanie is the Marketing Director at Talkroute and has been featured in Forbes, Inc, and Entrepreneur as a leading authority on business and telecommunications.
Stephanie is also the chief editor and contributing author for the Talkroute blog helping more than 100k entrepreneurs to start, run, and grow their businesses.