Social media trends, and even platforms, come and go. But can the same be said for your brand’s social media engagement? If you’ve had a channel go stagnant and need to reengage your social audience, here are five surefire strategies to help you win back your audience, and the algorithm.
1. Commit to Consistency
Ninety percent of the time, your audience has become unengaged because you haven’t consistently given them anything to engage with. For one reason or another, your social media channels have fallen off your priority list.
See if the following sounds familiar: You don’t have a routine content strategy and your feed has been nearly completely dormant. Every once in a while, usually with a holiday, the launch of a new marketing campaign, or a new team hire; you make a post, likely even committing to posting more frequently. This leaves your feed full of starts and stops and your audience unclear on what they should expect from you.
To understand why this doesn’t work, imagine if your favorite TV show produced content the same way – you’d eventually tune out too, right? What’s more, the network carrying your show would probably start to push it to less desirable timeslots, which is what the social media algorithms are doing, too.
The Fix: Find a posting frequency that’s realistic and that you can commit to. Sure, your top competitor might be churning out posts three times a day, but if you only have the resources to do one quality post a week, then that’s where you should start. Within a month, your followers, and the algorithm, will take notice.
2. Turn Off Auto-Pilot
But, wait! You’ve been religiously posting every Motivation Monday, Throwback Thursday and Fun Friday, you say. Consistency isn’t your issue! This is a signal that you’re in the other 10 percent of stagnant social profiles with stale, auto-pilot content.
If your posting frequency is consistent but your content is recycled or playing on the same hashtag themes, your low engagement numbers could be due to audience burn out.
If that TV show from our previous example ran re-runs every week or had the same three story lines playing out every episode, you’d eventually change the channel.
The Fix: Inject authenticity and relevancy into your content. Go behind the scenes or talk about trending topics to help your audience connect to your brand right now. You can still have evergreen posts to help fill your content calendar but creating a sense of timeliness with the majority of your posts will send the message that this is a brand worth engaging with again.
3. (Re)Introduce Dynamic Content
Have you been relying too much on link posts or stock images? This could be sapping away your brand personality, leaving your channel feeling like it’s run by robots and not humans.
Your audience follows you on social because they want to forge a connection with your brand. There’s something about who you are that resonates with them and they want more of it. If you’re using the same images everyone else has access to, there’s not enough you shining through in your posts.
The Fix: Mix it up with some thumb-stopping content! Gifs, videos and going live are all great ways to give your audience something unique to engage with. Plus, algorithms love this content, and your posts will get pushed higher up in your fans’ feeds.
4. Ask Your Audience to Participate
We’ve all heard the saying, “It never hurts to ask.” And on social media, it’s even been proven to help!
Something users love about social media is the opportunity to participate and have 2-way conversations with the accounts they follow. If your engagement is falling off, maybe it’s been a while since you’ve actively sought a conversation with your fans.
The Fix: Ask questions, share polls, invite feedback, or request user generated content. Most audience participation allows you to mine content for future use, helping you fill up your content calendar with poll results, how you’ve incorporated feedback, or images of users engaging with your brand IRL. You can even incentivize participation with a contest or giveaway to help get your engagement back on track.
5. Run an Ad Campaign
The previous four strategies can help move the needle organically, but they’ll have the most impact when supported with a paid strategy.
Low engagement numbers tell the algorithm your audience isn’t interested in your content, so it starts serving that content up less and less. To combat low impressions, pay to get your content in front of your audience.
The Fix: Run ad campaigns and boost your page posts to your current followers. This guarantees impressions on your more consistent, engaging content. While you’re spending money, you might as well pick up some new fans. Be sure the Facebook pixel to your website is firing, and target website visitors with your content to grow your follower count.
A stagnant social media channel is something that has happened to even the best brands. But a disengaged audience doesn’t mean you should throw in the towel! With these five strategies, you can reinvigorate your presence and reengage your audience.
