It’s time to acknowledge the greatness that is social media. The many social media platforms available to you offer an opportunity to have what I like to call, a free billboard for your brand.
Believe it or not, there are still people out there who refuse to accept social platforms as the awesome marketing tools that they are. This article is for them because whether you like it or not, these tools have taken over and are here to stay.
I will bet my last dollar you are active on at least 1 of the following: Facebook, Instagram, or Linkedin. Am I right? So join the global social media crew and start asking yourself, how does your brand use social media to your advantage? How do you go about getting engagement? How do you get engagement on social media with videos? Read on to get the goods!
What is engagement?
Let’s start with the basics. Have you heard the term “engagement” being used before in social media discussions, but you never really understood what it meant? Well here goes…simply put, engagement is best defined as a measurement to see how many people are interacting with your content via the number of comments, likes, and shares related to each one of your posts.
Take note: every platform may have minor differences in the terms being used to measure engagement, but most go by the above!
Why Do You Need Engagement?
Why do most teens in high school want to be the most popular? There are benefits to it and the followers are more likely to listen to you and approve of what you do – no matter what, right? The same stands when you have a substantial number of comments, likes, and shares on social media. Your content is reaching more eyes, and in the world of social media algorithms, your content is not only more likely to pop up on your the timeline or your followers, but you also have more of a chance to get engagement from new eyes. It’s like getting a whole lot of high-fives when you walk in a party – everyone wants to touch you!
Take note: Everyone wants to share video content. If you can somehow attract the most popular people with your video content, it will be like the term “word-of-mouth” on steroids, especially if your content goes viral!
How Do You Increase Engagement?
There are several “techniques” recommended, but the reality is, you have to have a balance of consistency, authenticity, and creativity. Seems easy enough, no? It is always a good rule of thumb to show consistency in how often you post. Make sure the content you post is authentic to your brand and the visual creativity of your content should be appealing in delivering your brand messaging. To increase your post engagement, take some time to do some research around the most popular hashtags relative to your brand. Hashtags are like keywords for social media. Follow the points below while doing your due diligence in developing a strategy for increasing engagement on your social media profiles. Ask yourself:
- What words (hashtags) would your audience use to search for what you do?
- Does your search need to be location-specific? If so, search for city, state, or even country hashtags relative to your brand.
- What type of post is it?
- Is it entertaining?
- Is it informative?
- Is it directing your audience to do something?
Jot down your answers. Once you are done with this task, search for all the hashtags that may apply to your brand & your posts, then search those same hashtags on the selected social media platform to see how much each one is searched. If you happen to fall into ones that have decent search numbers – select those and get to work adding those hashtags to your posts.
Take note: Facebook doesn’t recognize hashtags as much as Instagram. Instagram has a hashtag limit of 30 per post, and video content is continuing to gain momentum in being a valuable means of connecting to any audience. Video can provide an interactive and informative experience that images are not likely to offer.
How Do You Select Engagement Material Content?
It’s easy really, but sometimes we make things more complicated than necessary. Determine whether you are ok with staying committed to this content for life. If you answer yes to the following questions we confidently offer our blessing as you go for the engagement! #dramaticyesweknow.
- Does it look good?
- Does it follow your brand message?
- Does it make you feel an impactful emotion? Sad, mad, happy?
- Would you take the time to like it?
- Would you share it with your friends?
- Would you take the time to comment on it?
- Are you ok with it being online forever? #dramaticyesweknow #deleteisavailable
Take note: The better the content falls into the above and you focus on posting this type of content often, the engagement you so desire is highly likely to follow. Take some real time to study the profiles you like. Scroll through the timelines of your competitors. See what type of hashtags they are using, what their content visually looks like, and see what type of content they have. The most popular Instagram profiles with plenty of engagement have a combination of video and photos, by the way.
Videos have now become essential on timelines across the world. There is absolutely no denying the effectiveness of delivering any type of message via video, and social media platforms figured that out early. Cheers to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Linkedin!
If you are in need of some video advice, or maybe you are confused about the types of videos to make for social media, or maybe you have a promotional brand video idea whirling in your mind, either way, connect with us. We love this stuff from conception to delivery. Visit our blog for additional resources on storytelling, video marketing, event video production, and seriously, so much more!