When you look at the numbers, the extent to which social media has become an integral part of our lives is shocking. The average user spends 28% of their time online on social media, a figure that amounts to 1.72 hours per day. Keep in mind that this figure isn’t skewed by a small group of teenagers practically living on social media. It is the average of 2.22 billion social network users. That’s nearly a third of the world population.
Why do these figures matter for businesses? Year after year, it becomes more apparent that people are spending increasingly large amounts of time on social media. To find new customers, businesses need to engage with consumers on social media, but it’s a time-intensive and difficult task to create content that consumers want. Luckily, there are many tools at businesses’ disposal to strengthen their presences on social media.
Here are five tools that entrepreneurs can use to increase social engagement.
1. Buffer
The first step towards creating better engagement with your content is to post regularly at the times when your audience is most likely to be active on social media.
Buffer saves you time in this process by allowing you to schedule posts in advance across all of your social media accounts. Not only will this eliminate the hassle of logging in to each social media account every time you want to post something, but Buffer also offers basic analytics to track the success of each of your posts, giving you an idea of which content connects with your audience.
The first step to building audience engagement is creating a regular schedule, so users can become familiar with your business’s value to them as consumers via social media.
2. Binkd
If you want to boost your social engagement online, then create scenarios that require consumer interaction, which will lower bounce rates and convert a passive audience into an active one.
It’s not easy to create interactive experiences on social media channels, but that’s where software like Binkd comes in. Binkd allows you to create contests, polls, and quizzes on social media, driving your social engagement up by encouraging interactions with the possibility of winning prizes or discounts.
Binkd works across all social media platforms and can also help you set up promotions for your website on mobile and web devices. You can customize these promotional campaigns yourself, or you can work with Binkd’s team of developers and designers to bring your ideas to fruition. To better connect with your users, give them opportunities to interact and chances to win discounts, samples, or prizes.
3. Mention
No conversation is one-sided, so find out what people are saying about you in order to better understand your audience.
Mention makes sure no online comments about you slip past unnoticed by monitoring billions of sources in over forty languages, according to their website.
When someone talks about you, Mention takes that comment and adds it to a folder where you can see every post about you at once. This tool is incredibly beneficial to businesses because it shows you where those comments are coming from and whether someone important is talking about you.
While Mention provides the main benefit of getting ears and eyes on your audience, the software also offers a dashboard through which you can start conversations directly with consumers, without having to track down that specific post or comment on social media. With over 500,000 clients, Mention is an established service that offers real value to both enterprises and solo entrepreneurs alike.
4. Canva
Many studies point to the fact that posting visual content is more effective than text when it comes to engaging consumers. Users like to consume information as quickly as possible while minimizing effort, and the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is true.
While you could hire an illustrator or graphic designer to help create visual content for your social media, for many this is too expensive an option. For those on a budget, Canva is a great tool to craft beautiful designs using a simple drag-and-drop tool.
Offering thousands of layouts, Canva doesn’t feel like a template site, even though it is one. Users have created 71 million unique images to date, and the possibilities are as close to endless as you can get without hiring an artist yourself. While Canva isn’t purposed specifically for social media, you can easily utilize the tool to create aesthetic visuals to post on social media channels alongside your content and announcements. Attract the eye of your audience, and give them visual content via Canva.
5. Reach7
What happens when you expand your business overseas? How do you extend your reach in a different language? Do-it-yourself translation services can get you far, but ultimately, you’ll need to have someone on the team that can speak the language to truly reach that audience in a way that is human and relatable.
If you don’t have that luxury, use a service like Reach7. Reach7 can translate social media posts into over 80 languages for subscribers. The free plan offers Reach7’s software to translate posts, but paid subscribers get their posts checked by Reach7’s translation team to ensure accuracy. If you’re expanding your business internationally, it’s crucial to be able to engage those audiences in their native language in order to drive conversion rates and sales forward.
What other tools do you use to boost your social engagement? Leave a comment below.
This post was originally published on Simply Measured’s Blog and published with permission.
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