We all know social media is a powerful tool, but understanding how to leverage it to its full potential remains a mystery for many marketers. While influencers make getting followers and engagement seem like a breeze, most of us are struggling to create posts that match the algorithm (which is different for every platform) and get noticed by our target audience. 

Despite how difficult it is to achieve social media success, it’s a crucial component of any robust digital marketing strategy. When a large percentage of your target audience is constantly online, you’re missing out on the opportunity to promote your product, build brand awareness, and engage your prospects and customers if you don’t invest the proper resources on social media efforts. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy that guarantees social media success, but there are a few steps you can take to improve your chances. These 5 tips will help you write social media snippets that generate engagement and drive ROI. 

1) Ask Questions That Get Your Audience Thinking

One of the biggest challenges with social media is finding a way to stand out from the crowd. While it’s very easy to post a pretty picture that motivates somebody to “Like” your post, it’s much more difficult to write a social media snippet that strikes a chord with your audience. 

Asking a question is one proven tactic to increase engagement. Try asking your audience about a feature they’d like to see from your product or solution, how they’re using it, common challenges they deal with on a regular basis, or anything else that sparks a conversation about your brand. (But be prepared to answer difficult questions.) 

This method works because it gives your audience an opportunity to voice their opinion and provides you a chance to make them feel heard by responding to their comments. You can even continue to fuel engagement down the line by using the insights you gather to inform your product development, marketing efforts, and social media strategy moving forward.

2) Don’t Forget to Include a CTA (When Appropriate)

Motivating your audience to complete an action that brings them one step closer to reaching the end of the buyer journey is an essential aspect of every demand generation initiative. Therefore –– just like you do in emails, landing pages, blogs, and your website –– you should aim to include some sort of call to action (CTA) in your social media posts. 

Prompting your followers to answer a question, as we previously discussed, is one type of CTA, but there are so many other prompts you could also consider. These are just a few examples of CTAs you can leverage to generate engagement on your social media posts:

• Encourage Your Followers to Tag Their Friends: Ask your followers to tag a friend or two who will find your social media post useful or interesting. This will help you get more eyes on your post and increase your brand awareness.

• Invite Followers to Visit a Product Page or Download Content: If your goal is to attract more leads and hand raisers, invite your followers to visit a product page or fill out an adaptive form in exchange for a piece of relevant content. This will help you collect data and behavior insights so you can continue to engage with these contacts outside of social media. 

• Ask Followers to Sign Up for an Event or Webinar: Webinars and events are a great way to engage your target audience, but you have to get them to show up first. Promoting your event on social and asking your audience to click on a link to a landing page to learn more is a great way to build you list of attendees. From there, you can ask them to share the event’s hashtag on their personal feeds for a free gift.

As you can see, your CTAs will vary depending on the purpose of your post and desired outcome, but they are a crucial part of building relationships with your followers beyond your social media profiles. 

3) Review Trends for More Successful Social Media Posts

Even if you already have accurate buyer personas and a good understanding of your target audience, it’s important to remember that different channels require different messaging and content.  Some efforts are better suited for email, your website, or social media.

Therefore, you have to know what type of content your audience is looking for on social. An easy way to find out is to look through your data to see what kind of posts are inspiring your audience to stop scrolling and engage. 

Use the posts that garner more “Likes,” generate engagement, and motivate your followers to visit your site as a model for future posts. This not only helps you share content that your audience has already demonstrated that they like, it also helps you be consistent which, in turn, makes you more recognizable and memorable. 

4) Latch On to Current Events or Trends That Might Resonate With Your Audience

We all know how hard it is to get noticed when posts about a recent event or current trend are taking over social media. But rather than viewing these moments as obstacles, take advantage by latching on to them whenever it makes sense to do so. 

Case in point, the holidays are a great opportunity for you to promote your brand. For example, you could create a post around the New Year suggesting that your followers should make it a resolution to tackle a problem that only your product or service can solve. Posts like this improve your chances of showing up on people’s newsfeed and enable you to talk about a current topic that is likely resonating with your audience while also promoting your product. That’s a win-win-win situation, if you ask me!

5) Delivering the Right Message at the Right Time Is the Key

You need to provide your audience with personalized messaging that speaks to their interests and pain points. 

A marketing automation platform such as Act-On can allow you to track your website visitors behavior to determine which pages on your website are driving them to visit your social media profiles. This allows you to monitor trends among your audience to produce more relevant content that matches where your customers are in the buyer journey and builds upon information they already know.

Improve your timing by posting when your audience is most likely to see your posts. Have target customers in different time zones? Not a problem! A social media scheduling tool like Act-On’s advanced social media module enables you to automate your social media efforts to help you build an active social media presence without having to live in front of your computer screen.

Social Media Is an Extension of Your Overall Marketing Efforts 

Generating results from your social media efforts goes beyond writing witty posts that grab the attention of your audience. If you truly want to drive ROI from your efforts, social media should serve as focal point of your current marketing plan to help you engage, nurture, and keep moving your leads and customers through the buyer journey. 

The idea of going beyond social media might seem like a handful when you’re simply trying to get the gist of it, but crafting and executing a cohesive and effective digital marketing strategy is within reach. A marketing automation platform like Act-On enables you to personalize and automate the majority of your marketing efforts so you can bring your ideas to life and reap the rewards that come from a more robust and personalized marketing strategy. 

Interested in learning more about how Act-On can empower you to own the customer journey from beginning to end? Schedule a time to talk to one of our experts to learn more about how Act-On can help you launch better marketing campaigns that drive even better results.