How to Optimize Social Media Marketing Campaigns for Better Engagement

Social media has over 3.484 billion active users. To market to this massive audience, many brands have accounts on social media as well. However, it's important to know if it's effective enough.

Today, social media platforms are evolving faster than the phases of the moon. Optimizing your brand’s online presence requires you to go beyond simply publishing content.

If you want to make the most out of your social campaigns, you should ask yourself:

• Are your campaigns helping you build relationships with your audience?
• Does your social media strategy encourage conversations and conversions?
• Are you using the right social media management tools?

While creating quality content is paramount, increasing your social media engagement is not child’s play. You need to have strategies in place to grow your presence on these platforms.

Let’s discuss four strategies that can help boost your social media engagement like never before.

Strategies to Optimize Social Media Marketing Campaigns

1. Use the Power of Visuals to Your Advantage

First impressions matter. To benefit from the social platforms, which are saturated with content today, your content needs to stand out. Aesthetically pleasing visuals and good design may be just the instruments you need to create a scroll-stopping experience.

Not only do they help pique the readers’ interest, but they also make it easy for them to absorb the information.

For example, Airbnb promises comfortable and fun travelling experiences through pleasing imagery. Most of their social media content showcases people making the most of their lives on vacations using their services.

Impressive images can help you build curiosity and make people want to learn more about their behind-the-scenes story.

Visual content is a gold mine you should tap into. Here are a few ways through which you can ace visual content marketing for better engagement.

• Be consistent: Having a set brand tone and consistency helps increase your credibility. For example, a social media feed that only uses pastel shades would work much better than one that’s all mixed up.
• Avoid using stock images: In a world that’s ever-digitizing, it isn’t too difficult to tell the difference between a stock image and an original one. Authentic photos don’t just make for valuable content but are also a treat for the eyes.
• Get creative: Leveraging visual content marketing does not end at image-heavy content. You should also consider using infographics, videos, memes, and other forms of visual content to promote your brand on social media. Try finding what your target consumers like, and give them more of that.

Good visual content can convey a thousand words using just a few. 

2. Get Your Timing Right

When is your audience most likely to be online? Your content could be top-notch, but a total waste, if not timed well. According to a study, the best time to post on social media, in general, is between 9 am and 12 pm on the first three days of the workweek. 

However, the truth is, there is no magic formula to find the perfect time to post. Each brand has a unique product, audience, and strategy. For a brand targeting teenagers, it would probably make sense to post late at night. On the other hand, a brand catering to football fans could largely benefit from posting (more) during ongoing football matches.

You can use social media marketing tools such as Facebook Insights to figure out the times when most of your target audience is online. This can help you figure out the right time to publish your content. 

Alternatively, here’s how you can determine the best timing and frequency to post for your brand:

1. Rely on rudimentary data: If you’re just starting off, the chances are that you won’t have enough data to base your strategy on. However, some basic market research can guide you.
   
   Knowledge about your audience demographics and product type can go a long way for starters.
   
   For example, if you’re promoting your product on LinkedIn, posting during working hours on weekdays might be a good idea as the weekend is the worst time to post on the platform. Additionally, consider time zones. Refrain from posting at times when your audience will most likely be asleep.
2. Start posting: Now is the time to put your hypotheses to test. Start posting content based on the information you have and observe the results. Is there a particular frequency of posting that maximizes engagement? Which hour of the day generates the best results?
   
   Posting the same piece of content at different times can also help you determine the best time to post your content. 
3. Curate a strategy: Based on your observations, generate a strategy. 3-4 weeks of experimentation should give you enough insights into the timings and frequency that work best for you.

While narrowing down on an accurate posting schedule is difficult, it is of prime importance. It truly makes for one of the most effective ways to increase your traffic.

Scheduling is even more important on visual social platforms like Instagram where the consistency and timing of your posts can significantly impact your engagement and reach. However, it's important to know how to schedule Instagram posts correctly to make sure your posts go live at the right time for better engagement.

3. Employ the Right Social Media Engagement Tools

You don’t have to take it all on yourself. There’s an ocean of social media engagement tools you can choose from to optimize your campaigns. Whether your business is small, medium-sized, or large, a tool that fits your needs is easy to find.

These social media tools can help simplify tasks like:

• Hashtag research: Using hashtags helps businesses go beyond just their followers and reach out to those interested in the topic. Several tools offer in-depth insights into hashtags and help you find relevant, engaging, and trending hashtags.
• Campaign tracking: This helps measure the impact of your campaign. You can track multiple metrics like the number of link clicks, engagements, reach, and click-through rates. 
• Competitor research: Eyeing your competitors’ activity is significant when it comes to social media. It helps you become aware of the latest trends and identify gaps in your marketing strategy.
• Social media listening: Without social media listening, your marketing strategy is incomplete. In addition to analyzing how many people are talking about your business, through these tools, you can also understand what they want.
  With marketers prioritizing the evaluation of online mood and sentiment, a number of social listening tools are gaining traction.

You may also consider displaying your social media feeds on your website. It is a great way to engage your website audience and keep them longer on your site.

For example, if you are using WordPress, then using a plugin like Ray Social Feeds For Twitter is one way to display your tweets on your website.

You can use similar tools for different social media platforms.

4. Host Giveaways and Contests

While you may be churning out amazing informational content for your audience, it’s always good to shake things up a little, every once in a while. A great way of doing so is by hosting contests and giveaways. 

In addition to being a foolproof way of growing your following, these contests help increase your brand awareness with minimal effort.

As per a recent survey, nearly 66.8% of marketers host giveaways on multiple platforms. Additionally, 45.5% of them use both Facebook and Instagram to organize giveaways. These campaigns can generate a lot of buzz on social media if the prize you’re giving away is valuable enough. 

For instance, LEGOLAND California Resort recently organized a fun giveaway. It not only helped promote its 20th birthday but also got over 6000 likes and 1000 comments. 

Online contests are great ways to foster entertainment, introduce a new product, and especially boost social media engagement.

Depending on your brand and audience preferences, you could try any of the following contest ideas:

• Tag a friend: Followers need to tag their friends in the comments section for a chance to win. This brings a hoard of people to your post and boosts your brand’s exposure.
• Post a selfie: Ask followers to post a selfie (of them using a product), along with a contest-specific hashtag. This can not only help you promote the product, but also generate engagement and sales. 
• Comment to win: This is the simplest, safest, yet one of the most effective ways to boost engagement. Have your followers comment on a particular post, pick a random winner, and boom - you just ran a giveaway.

Conclusion

Social media’s massive audience provides you with a great opportunity to promote your brand. You should incorporate loads of visuals into your content to make it more attractive and engaging. 

It’s also necessary to get the time of posting your content right to ensure that it creates the maximum impact on your target audience. You should also incorporate the use of tools to simplify social media marketing. Lastly, host giveaways every once in a while to give a boost to your marketing efforts. 

You should also incorporate the use of social media automation tools to simplify social media marketing

What are your favourite ways to boost online engagement? Tell us in the comments below.