Quick Info:
| Why care? | Continuously nurturing the connection with your audience builds brand loyalty and trust which can translate into more sales. |
| Cost: | FREE |
| Who should do this: | Businesses with an online presence |
| Platform: | Social Media |
| How? | Read on… |
What is it?
An engagement strategy is a perfect way to keep your social media accounts active, bring new eyes to the business, and a friendly reminder to interact with your audience regularly.
It takes some time to make, but once you have your strategy in the bag, you’ll never have to worry about your accounts going quiet ever again.
Why is it important?
Social media is all about creating connections, but you can’t do that without engagement – it’s truly the part that’s social.
The more you engage with others, the easier it is to form relationships, foster connections, and get more people interested in your business.
Just like how your IRL (in real life) friends want to hear from you on a regular basis, your online community wants to know they can rely on you to show up consistently. Without the consistency piece, it’s not a real connection. Most friends aren’t interested in a one-sided relationship, whenever the other person needs something. The same goes online.
And what’s the easiest way to maintain consistency? Yup, we’re going to need an engagement strategy.
What’s included?
To create your engagement strategy, you want to look at three aspects of your engagement:
- Time
- Intention
- Connection
Time
Decide how much time you’ll spend engaging with other accounts. I recommend a minimum of 15 minutes per platform per workday. (That’s 1.25 hours per week spent on meaningful engagement with your community.)
Pro tip: block off that time in your calendar so you make the commitment to showing up during that time.
Intention
Choose the 5 accounts you will engage with every day. (If you need help finding these complementary accounts, check out my article on the subject here), and check each one off as you engage with them.
Then check your DMs, and your own post comments to make sure you’ve answered all the questions that are waiting for you. Check that off your list too.
If you do this consistently, you won’t need your list for very long. It’ll become second nature– Fast!
Connection
Now, for the hard part. Engagement is more than liking and commenting- it’s offering something meaningful to the conversation to foster true connection.
If you can get into the habit of crafting meaningful comments, you’ll rise above the crowd before you know it.
What is a meaningful comment?
A meaningful comment is more than a few empty words. Instead, your goal is to:
- add positivity to the post
- and seek a connection with the author
It can be a compliment on something you admire about them or celebrate a win with them like you are a friend.
It is NOT an advertisement for your business- don’t wreck all your hard work by throwing in a pitch of your own. Just show up for others. Karma will come back to you.
Next Steps
Once you have your engagement strategy in place, put it somewhere you can’t miss. A simple Post It note on your computer screen could be all you need to be reminded of how you’ll tackle your time. An online Word document or paper planner could also work. Do whatever feels natural and effortless for you.
Today’s task
✅ Create your engagement strategy and test it for a month. Feel free to adapt it as you go so you can fix anything that feels off or isn’t working. Once you’ve got your timing nailed down, then rinse and repeat!
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