How to Boost Social Media Engagement for IT Service Companies
We don't doubt that you're great at what you do in IT, but there tends to be a gap in promoting the IT industry on social media.
While the world of social media is not rocket science, it can indeed be aloof and mysterious—especially when it comes to running a successful campaign.
Join us as we explain how you can boost social media engagement for your IT marketing efforts and put your brand in the spotlight it deserves.
What is Social Media Engagement?
Social media can be a tough nut to crack when it comes to gaining real traction and meaningful visibility. So, let's start with what social media engagement means and how it affects your IT growth marketing.
Social media engagement involves actions taken by both you and your audience to be, well, social.
When you share a post, your audience will like, comment, share, or save it—these are all forms of engagement.
Similar to a physical store, where visitors browse, take mental notes, and share compliments or criticism, social media users interact by tapping, sharing, or writing comments about their thoughts and opinions.
Why Engagement for Your Social Media Account is Important
The reason engagement is important is because you can't simply post something and then forget about it. The platform algorithms won't consider you an active user and, therefore, won't show your content to more accounts.
The secret is, the more relevant you become and the more traction you gain, the more the social media platforms will recognize that you're a contributing member.
In other words, if you don't engage, your profile is basically a ghost town. No one knows who you are, what you're about, or worse, simply don't care.
But with a little thing called social proof, the more attention you can bring in, the more people are inclined to check out your content if others are already sharing their support on your page.
7 Ways to Increase Your Engagement Rates
Once you better understand the driving force behind social media, it gets easier to find a rhythm. But there are steps one must take to ensure a successful campaign.
Here's how you can increase your engagement rates and improve your IT marketing.
1. Know your Audience
Firstly, you need to know who you're creating content for. You can do this by understanding the pain points of your audience and positioning your brand as the ideal solution to their problems. We suggest doing careful research and developing your unique selling proposition for your ICP. (ideal customer profile)
2. Entertain, Educate, or Inform
People are active on social media for a number of reasons. Depending on the platform, many of these platforms are for entertainment. Even if something is informative, it's often presented in an entertaining way to attract the attention of the target audience. The important thing here is to create content filled with value—this is the ticket to their trust.
3. Create Shareable Content
When people share your content with others because they feel compelled to, that's when you know you're making waves. It also validates that you're providing the kind of value your audience wants to consume. Going back to the section above, if it's quality content, people will notice and naturally become advocates of your brand.
4. Get Visual
Words alone can be boring. For the most part. And attention spans are getting shorter each day.
Investing in creative graphic design or top-tier video content will help you cut through the noise and create excitement by stimulating more than one dopamine trigger at a time.
5. Keep an Eye on Metrics
As you post and see how things perform, keep a close eye on what works and what doesn't. The beauty of social media accounts is that they have built-in analytics to inform you about your efforts. And if you opt for a professional account, you can access even more detailed data to evaluate your campaign efforts.
6. Be the Engager
This is often overlooked. Many people think that once you publish something, everyone will come flocking to their content. The fact is, as mentioned earlier, social media accounts want to see you as an active user. This means YOU TOO, have to be active, comment, like, share, and support relevant accounts so that the algorithms 'introduce' your brand to other users.
7. Test times to post
Depending on the platform you choose, the time you choose to post will play an important role in the success of your campaigns. On LinkedIn, for example, the best times to post are Tuesdays and Thursdays mornings between 7 am and 9 am. The reason being, this is more of a B2B platform, where its users typically check and engage during standard business hours. Know what platform best represents your brand and research/test the best times to post.
Conclusion
Social media engagement is undoubtedly one of the driving forces behind a successful marketing campaign. And if you don't approach it correctly (as many brands do) you're setting yourself up to put effort into something that will have little to no results.
However, by staying active and applying the principles mentioned in this article, you can begin to steer your IT marketing efforts toward the right path.
