As social media evolves, businesses can’t afford to be left behind. It’s important to stay on the forefront of emerging trends on channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter by identifying innovative strategies to boost your social media audience. By incorporating some of these key practices into the mix, your business should see an increase in both reach and engagement, and perhaps phone calls and emails that lead to new customers.
One of the latest and most effective features currently trending among Facebook users is the live video feature. Video is an effective way of captivating the attention of followers on social media, and videos natively uploaded to Facebook are getting the most reach by far compared to other content formats such as photos, memes or compelling copy.
Although not a new feature, inviting the people who have reacted to your posts also to like your business page is still a great way to amp up your following, page reach, and page engagement. This option is only available to pages with fewer than 100,000 total page likes. This only takes 15 minutes a week! Simply go through the week’s posts, and click on each post, and find all of the people that have given a like or reaction. A new window will pop up, and you will want to click on the wheel next to their name and invite the person to like the page if they haven’t already.
Instagram makes it easier than ever before to gain exposure and followers organically by strategically commenting on posts. As a business, you can begin the process by interacting with your own Instagram audience and the accounts of other brands and companies. This doesn’t have to be a tedious task. We suggest developing a plan of action to ensure you are organized. We recommend starting off by choosing 5-7 brand accounts that are similar to your business and interact with them regularly. This may include posting an authentic comment or liking two of their new photos once a week. Commenting is important because it will play an essential role in getting your account in front of the followers of similar brands who will care about your content.
Don’t forget to take advantage of Instagram’s new Like Post Comments feature. Much like Facebook, the new feature empowers followers to interact with content, which will help your business improve its Instagram engagement.
Lastly, Instagram introduced its stories and live stories features earlier this year, which you should start using immediately to provide potential followers with a sharper image of the mission, vision, and services of your business. Using live stories can also help get your business featured in Instagram’s Explore section, which opens the social media door to discover endless possibilities for selecting new people to follow.
Much like Facebook and Instagram, live video is blazing the trail for innovative branding on Twitter. Twitter followers respond well to live videos that reflect your brand’s personality and share an element of surprise. Twitter users can create live video right from the app, which will then stream from their Periscope account.
Also, relatively new, is the update to Twitter’s 140-character limit. Twitter no longer counts photos and links as part of the character limit, which gives you more opportunities to use hashtags to better express your message.
Finally, consistency is key when using Twitter effectively. That means posting frequently and engaging with others’ posts to see the best results.
Interested in remaining on the forefront of this year’s social media trends, be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for helpful tips!
