Lesson 4: Post more engaging and consistent stories
In this lesson, we will dive deeper into how to post more consistent and engaging content. The content of your posts is the determining factor in whether someone will scroll past or connect with you. You want to keep your posts short, sweet, and frequent enough to keep followers aware (but not overwhelmed).
Be consistent
Consistency can help drive engagement. To stay consistent, you’ll need to craft an effective social media content strategy by organizing and managing a posting calendar.
Set goals for what you’re trying to achieve, so that you can be intentional about what you’re sharing with your fans, followers, and potential customers on social media. Then, look at the year ahead and plan out important events, holidays, and specials you want to highlight to make a monthly social media content calendar.
Make sure to create a nice balance of informational, promotional, and feel-good posts throughout each month. Once your plan is in place, crafting your post content is the next step.
LEVERAGING INSTAGRAM STORIES
Instagram Stories don’t follow the exact same rules posts to your Instagram grid do. Stories are more casual and they can be posted more frequently than 2 to 3 times a week. Stories allow you to share less-polished, behind-the-scenes, real-life content that tells a compelling story while engaging with your followers.
Stories are also a fantastic place to publish user-generated content (like fun photos customers took using your product) if you don’t want it to dominate your main feed. You can also save stories as “Highlights” that are pinned to the top of your profile so they don’t disappear after 24 hours. Instagram stories are a lower pressure, fun way to engage your audience, so give them a try!
Be engaging
Social media can be used to facilitate more engaging connections with potential consumers than other platforms because of their interactive features. Take advantage of the interactivity of social media by creating posts that encourage UGC or user-generated content (i.e., content made by your followers.)
You can ask your followers questions or have a member of your team “takeover” your Instagram stories answer customer questions. You can do a contest to give away a product or service and have people enter by commenting and tagging a friend. You can even post fun, entertaining content that engages your audience. For example, if you own a dog grooming service, you could ask followers to describe their dog using three emojis in the comment section.
Remember to ask for feedback and feature customer reviews. The key is, create posts that actively engage your audience!
Be detail-oriented
The little details of your posts can do a lot to boost engagement. Use compelling captions to give context to your post and to draw your followers in and get them to relate with you or understand you better. Use a consistent tone that reflects your brand voice. Create a branded hashtag and feature it. Keep posts short and easy to process–think quality, not quantity.
PRO-TIP
Use hashtags to extend your reach. Users can discover content by searching hashtags on their own or tapping through related posts for a particular tag. Find out what hashtags your audience is using and incorporate them into your posts. (Keep it classy, though. Too many hashtags or unrelated hashtags can start making your posts look spammy).
Now that you have some good ideas for how to post consistent, engaging content, let’s talk about how to leverage social media metrics. Continue to the next lesson to learn more.