According to a report by Statista.com, there will be around 2.13 billion social media users worldwide in 2016. And a fair share of these social media users are your prospects and target audience. Quite obviously, it makes sense for you to devise a strategy to engage these users on social media platforms.

But over the years, social media marketing has become noisy, ineffective, and focused primarily on bombarding people with static social content. Naturally, users have become desensitized to articles, blogs, white papers, etc. Resultantly, it has become more difficult than ever for businesses to boost social engagement.

In fact, a survey done by CMI reveals that over 58% of marketers believe that their content does not create any opportunity for engagement. The competition on the web has become fierce, forcing businesses and content marketers to become more creative than ever before in their content endeavors.

Sadly, most social media marketers fail in their content endeavors and think that creating social media campaign that summons apt attention and interest from the target audience is difficult, even downright impossible. But is it so difficult to design social media campaigns that create opportunities for better user engagement? The answer is NO!

In this article, we’ll present to you some time-proven strategies, tips, and tricks to ensure that your social media campaign gets you 100% social engagement.

Tools to Boost Social Engagement

Most businesses understand the importance of exploring social channels to effectively connect and engage with their target audience. Needless to say, designing a campaign that can boost social engagement is an essential part of your social media marketing plan. But designing such campaigns is no mean feat. That’s why we’ve listed a few easy tools that come in handy when you’re looking to boost social engagement.

• List: A list is one the most effective tools to effectively engage with your audience. A list usually comprises some funny points that you want to highlight about an issue or a subject. The issue should however be of crucial importance to your community, as you want your audience to take an interest. So, prepare a list of the top five things that people should be doing daily. The list should be prepared around current issues such as cyberbullying, in which case the list may include 5 ways to prevent youngsters from being victimized. But keep the title and the entire setup simple.
• Opinion Poll: An opinion poll is a good tactic to keep your audiences busy on things related to your business. While designing the poll, make sure that you give your audiences many options so that they take time to think over the issue. Survey Monkey suggests you use an opinion poll for feedback from your consumers about your products or services. But no matter what you use opinion polls for, just make sure that you incorporate opinion polls in your social media campaigns.
• Pop Quiz: This is yet another impressive way to engage people. In fact, an article published at Designhill.com reveals that pop quizzes can help you increase your Facebook followers by 200%. The pop quiz allows you to set a series of questions for audiences with many possible answers. You must provide them with one correct answer but ensure that you have information on why that answer is right. While choosing the topics for the pop quiz, make sure to choose issues that you have raised recently in your blogs, social media posts, etc., so that they go back to the content to get more information that they have missed. But focus on keeping your pop quiz positive.
• Personality Test: The personality test is a brilliant way to engage with target users. Often people look out to know what type of personality they carry and the best way to make them enquire more about their personality is to ask them relevant questions related to their persona. After they answer all your questions, you tell them that their personality matches a certain celebrity or a famous entrepreneur. Snap App suggests you get acquainted with the best practices of creating a personality test to ensure a roaring success. Your social media campaigns must feature such personality tests for your audience to boost user engagement on social media.
• Commenticle: Commenticle is a type of opinion poll that helps you get readers’ opinions and views about an article or a blog. This is a simple concept where you first create links to share an article. Then, you create questions relevant to the article with the aim of engaging your audience. For example, if your article is about different aspects of branding tools, then create a Commenticle with questions asking them to take a good look at your article or blog that reveals about popular businesses, sites, and even destinations. This way, you can compel them to read and think about your content once again.
• The Internet simply swarms with a host of free and paid resources that can help you create polls, quizzes, lists, Commenticles, etc. for social engagement easily and affordably. Some of these resources also allow you to share your quizzes, polls, or lists directly on your social media platforms. You can also use these resources to analyze how your quizzes, opinion polls, lists, or personality tests are performing on social media platforms. You get to know the number of views and shares your quiz is getting, or how many people completed your polls.

Platforms to Launch Social Campaigns

Before you go ahead with using one of the aforementioned ways to engage your social media audiences on social media, it makes sense to understand the preferred networks where your target audience is likely to hang out. An Expand Rambling report reveals that there are:

• 1.49 billion Monthly active Facebook users,
• 316million Monthly active Twitter users,
• 380 million users on LinkedIn,
• More than 1 billion YouTube users,
• 300 million Monthly active Instagram users, and
• 100 million users on Pinterest.

Once you’ve identified where your target users like to hang out, then decide the way you want to approach to connect with your users. Facebook, for instance, provides many opportunities with a wide range of options for you to engage your audiences with quizzes and polls. Similarly, there are a number of tools that allow you to post surveys on LinkedIn.

No matter, what platform you choose, never forget to play by the rules. That means posting things that meet with the approval of the social media channel you’re using. Otherwise, you could get the account suspended.

In addition, do well to ensure that your social media posts are visually appealing. But remember to post relevant images, those that have a clear connection to the site and your brand. For example, if you’re into the sports business, your company’s social media page must feature photos that showcase your services or products and must also be part of the list, as should be your vital branding elements such your sports logo design.

Tips to Enhance Social Engagement

Social Engagement is a critical part of social media marketing. But sadly, most businesses often overlook this critical aspect. Nothing could be more detrimental to a business than this careless approach. Isn’t the point of you being on social media is to engage with as many prospects and customers as possible? But how would you do that? Here are some easy to follow that can help you boost engagement on your social media accounts.

• Create Interesting Content – Okay, you’ve heard this a million times! But people love to be engaged with interesting content. Remember, less than 1% of all created content receives more than 1,000 shares, according to TruConversion. They come to a site not just to be informed on a certain issue. For them, getting the information in an entertaining but engaging way is equally important. They almost hate to be preached on by anyone and so they look for a friendlier way to get into an issue and find solutions. When we talk of engaging the audience, it simply implies that you are going to get their attention by providing them with something interesting.
• Research Your Audience -This means that just running any opinion polls, quiz, personality test, etc. is no guarantee to engage visitors. Instead, you should launch a social media campaign after fully researching your market and knowing what people are seeking when they search for your products or services. Clearly, be fully prepared with adequate research on your niche market and customers. By understanding where your target audience is likely to hang out, you can in turn adjust your strategy to focus on them through a platform that they recognize and use every day.
• Ensure a Dash of Fun – Clickz.com suggests you make your quiz and polls funny and entertaining, which is a surefire way to keep people interested when they proceed towards answering your questions. Set the questions with a little touch of humor and tease, provoke, and encourage them to give answers.
• Tricks to Drive Engagement on Social Media

Perhaps the best thing about social media marketing is that you can get free publicity and brand awareness. But, if your social media campaigns are not getting much engagement, then there really isn’t much help that your business would get from social media. So what do you do? Check out these sure-fire tricks that can help you increase social media engagement.

• Be Authentic – Remember to keep it real. Connect on a personal level with your target users. Make your communication as simple as it can be. Try to keep it authentic, and genuine, and be ever ready to communicate your brand’s message in the most simple and fun way possible.
• First 10 Minutes are Critical – Welink.com suggests you engage timely for best results. Remember, the first 10 minutes of your posts going live are the most critical. Be punctual when it comes to responding to a post.
• Be an Expert – Engage with your customers and share with them content as an expert. Do listen to them and handle their queries or concerns on a timely basis.
• Connect with Influencers – Nora Flint suggests you look for influencers who talk about your industry, products or services. Influencers are those who have a large social following. Connect and engage with influencers, and participate in conversations they start or lead. Once you’re able to strike a rapport with them, request them to retweet your social media content, ask them to link back to your social content and start a conversation around your brand on social media.

With these tools, tips, and tricks in mind, you surely will be able to boost engagement on social media. Your posts will pick up reach and people will want to stay on your social media pages and know more about your brand. Remember, the goal here is to communicate and build relations, which will, in turn, earn you 100% social engagement.

We’d love to hear your feedback and comments on these tools, tips, and tricks! If there are any other tips, tricks, and tools that are worth adding, let us know in the comments below.