What is community engagement and why should you do it?

Community engagement is fun and yet probably the most time-consuming task you might do when building your social media following. It's the task of actually engaging with your community.

Yes, that’s not just 'liking' but engaging with your followers! You might do this by leaving meaningful comments, asking questions, responding to stories, and so on.

Why do we do this?

Connecting with other profiles helps to increase engagement overall and on your posts. It’s the idea that if you engage with your followers, they are then more likely to engage back whenever YOU post. This is because you have created a connection and they want to interact back, similar to that of a new friend.

Now this one goes both ways. If someone comments on your post or sends you a DM, you must respond! Just think, someone has taken the time to not only read your caption but also share their thoughts. After all of that effort, it’s imperative you reach back out to them and respond. Even if it's just a fun emoji! 🤠

As your account starts to grow and you start receiving more and more comments, you may not be able to respond to everyone. But at this stage, no one expects you to. And if you do, people absolutely adore it! There are large companies that have dedicated people for this task and they respond to Every. Single. Comment. Yes, I know, this sounds daunting when you have thousands of comments but this simple 'albeit time-consuming' action can skyrocket your growth. It's really up to you at the end of the day on how much time and marketing budget you want to spend on this.

So, how much time should we spend?

For any social media platform, our golden rule is a minimum of 30 minutes to 1 hour a day. This way you can respond to as many comments and DM's (direct messages) as possible and if you still have time, reach out to your followers and engage with them. Just think, the more time you spend, the higher your engagement and growth will be so the more the merrier with this marketing activity.

If you think you would like specialist help with your Social Media accounts or want us to take over your community engagement, send us an email at hello@thesocialdeli.co

Why you should be using Instagram Stories to drive sales and grow your brand presence.

Instagram stories are a crucial step in any business's social media strategy. The platform has now shown us that Instagram stories from a business profile will receive more views than a personal profile. This means that you have an opportunity to capture the attention of customers when they have time on their hands and are primed to buy.

We’ve listed 7 reasons why you should be posting multiple stories a day and how to effectively use them.

1. Visibility

Your followers are notified when you publish a new story on the home page with the colourful ring around your profile image. This makes your stories harder to miss than scrolling through the feed to see your latest post. Posting frequent stories also notifies Instagram's algorithm to place your post at the top of the feed as your profile is seen to be 'active'.

2. Instant Customer Feedback

Asking your follower's questions can be a great way to hone in on what they're interested in and how to better drive new products or services to fulfil these needs and interests. Just launched a new product? Post a sneak peek and get instant and honest feedback from your customers!

3. Web traffic

When you hit 10k followers you will have access to swipe up links to your webpage which will further drive followers, hopefully converting these ‘followers’ into customers.

4. Personality

Instagram stories are a great way to show the ‘in-between’ and less curated imagery. These might be ‘behind-the-scenes’ shots of a food photo shoot or sneak peeks of a new product that might be hitting the shelves.

As Instagram stories don’t need to look as stylized as your feed, this is a great opportunity to show images and videos of the team on-the-go and help people connect with you and humanize your brand.

5. Event marketing

Need to market your event last minute? Instagram stories might just encourage people to attend if you post a few sneak peeks of the event in action and invite people to come and join!

6. Front-of-mind

Instagram stories are a great way to be present and active in your potential customers' feeds. The more they see your content, the more inclined they will be to talk about you or even buy from you in the future.

7. Sales

Instagram stories are one of social media's biggest secret sales weapons as they keep your brand at the back of consumers' minds when you continuously post interesting and relevant stories.

Just remember "one-third of the most-viewed stories come from businesses, and one in five stories gets a direct message from its viewers." - according to Instagram internal data.

Why you should be using a content calendar.

What exactly is a social media content calendar?

Just like any calendar, it’s a way of mapping out future events and getting organized for what’s to come. In this case, you’re mapping your marketing activities and what and when you would like to promote certain services. Whether you use pen and paper, a Trello board, or an excel document, this is a crucial step in your overarching marketing strategy as this will dictate what and when you will post throughout the defined period.

We recommend working with seasonal calendars and then an overarching yearly marketing calendar coinciding with your business's goals.

This helps to keep a streamlined approach to your marketing activities, saving you time and making sure every post is in line with your marketing strategy.

1. Avoid fluff content.

A content calendar will help you to avoid what we call the ‘marketing fuff’. These are the irrelevant posts you might see businesses posting from time to time, just so they look 'active'. Every single post should have a purpose and be in line with what you are trying to market. Mapping one week to a year in advance allows you and your team to stay on track and spend more time measuring results and shifting content strategies.

2. Be consistent.

A content calendar allows you to design and post similar content across multiple social media channels giving your brand a current and consistent message during that time.

Let’s say you are a clothing line and have just dropped a new jacket. You will want to promote this ‘super cool’ jacket on your Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, and home page all at the same time. You will also want all of your visual elements to look the same to avoid any customer confusion or drop-out.

3. Hook them in.

Planning a content calendar allows you to sit down and define your content pillars. These ‘pillars’ are themes or types of posts that you want to post throughout the specified period. Content pillars might include:

+ New products

+ About the team

+ Instructional posts

+ Recipes

+ Events, and so on.

Now let's say you might post one of each of these weekly launching on the same day of each week. Your loyal following will be attracted to one or more of these content themes and will look forward and expect the content piece to land each week! I.E. Friday cocktail recipe.

If you don’t plan, there is little chance of you and your team keeping these regular content pieces up when sh”t hits the fan at work!

4. Work smart, not hard.

Having a content calendar and (hopefully scheduled posts) allows you and your team to focus on what's important. This is posting fun and engaging stories, engaging with your social media community, measuring the success of your posts, and strategising for the future.

5. Collaborate.

Having a content calendar allows you to gain access to the team's feedback and ideas ahead of time. Allowing everyone to contribute to this creates an environment for success as more heads are always better than one.

Last words of wisdom. And believe us, we’ve made this mistake. SET REALISTIC GOALS. Set publishing goals you can meet and best of all, schedule ahead of time!

We create content calendars for all of our campaigns through Trello so that our clients can visually see their social media feed coming together as we build it. It also gives them plenty of opportunities to change the look, hashtags, emojis, and captions prior to launch so that when we launch, they know it's going to be amazing!

If you think you'd like to work with us on your social media, contact us at hello@thesocialdeli.co and we can schedule a social media marketing brainstorm!