Things You Didn't Know About Social Media Marketing Visuals help in increasing user-engagement and their levels of interest

Lately, it seems that businesses of all types are engaging themselves in marketing efforts that can help them reinforce or accomplish their business goals. This is mainly done by using different social media platforms. Social media marketing including Influencer Marketing are being recognized as one of the most powerful means of engaging potential clients and increasing brand awareness.

My Take on this

As a social media marketer and blogger, I work consistently on designing and launching various contests and campaigns depending on the client's requirements so as to get desired results. While most of my campaigns are a success, there are some that don't deliver expected results. As a part of social media marketing; one of my posts recently got 233,741 views, 1,057 likes and 1,036 Comments on LinkedIn.

The analysis of the post helped me gain some useful insights and interesting facts about user engagement on social media platforms:

1. The same post was published across all social media networking channels including Facebook and Twitter. The published post got such high levels of engagement only on LinkedIn and nowhere else. Thus, LinkedIn is one such platform where the users look for value addition. Also, it is a platform that enables value creation.

2. Visuals help in increasing user-engagement and their levels of interest. However, they, alone, are not sufficient. What is even more important is the highly engaging content that has been curated carefully by keeping the target audience into consideration. The factors that should be considered properly include the age-group, demographics and needs.

3. A simple yet powerful post can yield amazing results on a targeted social media platform. A powerful post of this kind is the one that succeeds in delivering some unique information or promises to add value in some form or the other to the users. For example, my post offered an opportunity for young people who are, often, looking at some interesting opportunities that can help them take the role of an entrepreneur.

If you see that your post is not getting enough likes, then there is some area where you are going wrong. Being too boring or preachy could be one of the reasons. If you use an image, make sure it is a high-resolution one. Some unique and quirky can do wonders for your business. At the end of the day, it is all about proving that your brand can offer more than your competitors and is different in more ways than one.

Direct communication is the key. With 2.75 million blog posts getting published every day and 60 million messages getting handled by WhatsApp and Facebook on a daily basis, the users are least interested in conventional posts that highlight quotes, memes, or lessons to be learned. Instead, what they are looking at is direct conversation. You need to work towards engaging people into a conversation in which they are provoked to ask questions, express their point of view or provide their information. This can be accomplished by doing the following things:

• Invite users to ask questions, participate in contests, take polls, and review your products and services. In a nutshell, ask them to interact with your brand.

• Give them a reason to spend time on providing the information to you. You may provide incentives or offer prizes and discounts in exchange of their time and attention.

You manage to publish a compelling post. As a result, your post generates a huge number of likes and comments, just the way you wanted it to. It indeed gives you a great sense of accomplishment. The worst thing you may, however, do at this time is to neglect engaging users proactively by not answering and addressing critique quickly and to reinforce positive interactions with personal attention and care. It might be time-consuming and you may see it as a mundane task as it includes a lot of typing, addressing the same things over and again. What you must, however, understand is that there is no substitute to this. I get so many messages in my inbox where people thank me for taking out time and replying to their messages and telling me that there are many who don't bother doing the same. And then out of personal experience, I know top CEOs, CMOs, Consultants and many more who ensure they send replies to the messages they receive in their inbox. The choice is all yours as to in which category of people you would want yourself to fall into. Remember, the number of people you engage in your future posts depends directly on the choices you make today.

Finally, you cannot ignore Social Media in today's world if you want success,. Boosting your brand image is no cakewalk and it might require some time and efforts, but if done right with the help of engaging and eye-catching posts, then nothing like it. Be creative, be unique, and engage your audience and you are good to go!