Reading Time: 3 minutes

There is no silver bullet for attracting clicks and engagement on your social media pages. There are, however, a number of approaches that can help you appeal to your audience’s sensibilities, and persuade action from their side.

1. Use questions and polls to spark dialogue and participation

 

 

Asking your community questions is one way of encouraging clicks. The questions should be well-thought out, relevant to your fans and followers, and interesting enough for them to care. It could solicit their general opinions or unique expertise (if you’re a B2B or niche brand) OR be light-hearted and humorous.

You learn more by listening than by talking. Your social media community can offer honest and fresh insights that may have skipped past you. Brainstorm on questions that can serve as a learning experience and provide valuable input.

– Don’t ask basic questions that fans are likely to find boring and ignore.

– Use creative graphics to capture attention and motivate responses.

– Keep the question simple/avoid ambiguity.

– Check for grammar to eliminate any potential misinterpretations.

– Decide whether a close-ended or open-ended approach works best for the particular query.

– If possible, explain why you are asking the question. It could be a pre-cursor to a new value-added service, community campaign, ebook or podcast.

An alternative is to create a Twitter poll on a topical issue or a customer challenge. Here, you want to briefly describe your intent for asking the question.

.

Do respond to the answers. A simple ‘thanks’ to the first few answers and an overall ‘thank you everyone’ to everyone who responded will suffice. Retweet the most interesting or useful answers, with a comment or two of your own.

To improve click-through, consider compiling all answers into a blog post and sharing a link to it. If the purpose for the poll/question is a new product or service offering, be sure to create a separate landing page spotlighting the culmination of your fans’ and followers’ inputs.

2. Some of your posts should elicit positive emotions

A study on emotional contagion in social media posts has shown that posts with a positive message motivate people to share positive messages. Data from millions of Facebook users revealed that emotions and happiness can spread contagiously between people living in different geographic locations. Positivity is more infectious than negativity, and people are more likely to adopt a reassuring and optimistic attitude in their messages.

At least some of your messaging should be positive and uplifting. Come up with content ideas that put fans in a good mood. For this to attract clicks and shares, you should be aware of your target demographic’s likes, interests and attitudes.

– Use images that support the messaging of your posts. Compatible themes include nature, friendship, achievement, pets, babies, laughter, solidarity.

– Pay attention to colors: Psychologically, yellow is the strongest color expressing emotional strength, confidence and friendliness. Green evokes a sense of harmony, peace, refreshment and rest. Orange conveys fun, warmth and passion pretty effectively.

– Use affirmative messages that show examples of an individual/individuals acting in positive ways or motivate your fans and followers to act in a certain way.

3. Boost fans’ and followers’ motivation to succeed at a particular goal

 

In continuation from the point above, use quotes, create quote photos, or profile a satisfied customer to motivate your community’s determination to succeed. This tactic works especially well if your product/service is helping customers achieve a similar, distinct goal.

– Keep pushing out motivational messages that energize your audience to keep up their efforts.

– Share tips and recommendations that enable them to be more effective or address a common challenge.

– Use images and videos that help them visualize success.

4. Highlight your CSR programs

Today, we are more culturally, politically and environmentally aware. Social networks have made it possible for everyone to voice their opinion, learn about new campaigns, and at the very least, share those campaigns/causes/charity runs with their contacts.

A study by private global consulting firm Reputation Institute of 47,000 consumers in 15 markets found that 42% of how people feel about a company is influenced by their perceptions about the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Save time managing your social media accounts

---

Are you still managing your social media accounts directly from Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn? Make your life easier by managing all your social media in one place, schedule posts, repeat posts, curate content and more. Try DrumUp now, it's free, forever.

By sharing how your CSR programs are assisting the local community or underpriveleged people, you can generate good feelings about your company. Customers who feel inspired by your work are very likely to share those posts online, resulting in greater clicks and interactions for you.

5. Deliver value

Clicks and conversations are spurred by quality, value-focused content. If your posts are giving your audience good information to work with, they will respond, share or do both. Publishing consistently useful content will also encourage them to keep returning to your social media pages and consider your special offers.

When creating social media content, check if it is:

– Giving them information that they cannot get from thousands of other sources

– Providing insights that directly address their current challenges or priorities

– Helping them leverage a strategy faster or more effectively than their competitors

– Connecting professionally and emotionally with them

Evaluate content discovery tools and social media management software to build a powerful social media engagement strategy that gets click-throughs and empowers you to develop a rapport with your audience.

 

Image Credit: Pixabay