These 7 tips to increase social engagement are worth knowing if you want to jump-start your marketing and brand-awareness campaigns.

Marketing is a difficult and ongoing investment that any successful company has to make. It is tedious and requires a lot of focus and discipline. Afterall, if it were easy everyone would be successful. It’s not. Which is why many companies hire experts to handle marketing efforts on their behalf. These efforts can include writing marketing plans, doing SEO, writing content, creating and executing PPC advertising, creating videos, and creating online public relations to let potential customer know who you are.

However. most small companies and start-ups don’t have the budget to hire outside companies, so they have to do it themselves, so these 7 tips to increase social engagement are a place to begin.

At the same time, companies large and small underestimate the value of marketing. In fact, when they face tight budget crunch from falling sales, many companies — large and small — look to cut their marketing budget first. They should be increasing those budgets, as marketing is the lifeblood of new sales, and sales are the lifeblood of any sustainable enterprise.

So it is important to plan ahead. Build a marketing plan (which will we’ll cover in a future article). A good marketing plan is your roadmap: what to do; when to do it and, how to zig and zag in an uncertain and ever-changing marketplace.

It all begins with brand-awareness. If potential customers don’t know who you are and what you’re about, you’re not going to close sales.

To that end, social media has the great potential of telling your story to a large audience. In the end, remember, that marketing is all about “telling your story”. But the old adage of “build it and they will come” doesn’t work in this case. The idea that you can simply build social media pages and post random articles and announcements is a waste of your valuable time. Thus, 7 tips to increase social engagement is your starting point, not the end all.

Before you begin, you need to ask yourself:

• Who are my potential customers?
• Where do they come from?
• What are they looking for?
• How do I convince them that my product/ service is worth their investment?

In part, your goals should include clear and concise messaging.  And as my associate and friend Vinil Ramdev suggested, it should also include establishing yourself as an authoritative voice in your industry or product/ service sector. Some ways to do this include writing articles of interest, doing research and publishing white papers (maybe 4 a year), and even, when possible, getting yourself on the panels at events.

Having said that, let’s get to the heart of this article.

7 Tips To Increase Social Engagement

1. Identify Trends. Every industry sector has trends: the things people are talking about. A good start for this is to hop on Twitter or an industry-specific forum and check out what’s trending. Think about what you can add to the discussion.
2. Engage with Helpful Information. you wouldn’t go to live event, meet someone and say “I sell X, would you like to buy it?” Social online is no different. Start a conversation, then engage with what interests them, and provide helpful insights to things they care about. This fulfills the earlier discussion of presenting yourself as an authoritative voice.
3. Change Your Approach. Any good marketer will engage in A/B testing. Float a topic, gage the interest level. Try another until you hone in on what gets a reaction. Humor can be a good ice-breaker. For an example, a cigar company we work with posted the comic to the right.
4. Content. Before you begin, build a library of article topics, images, and video to use at the appropriate time, and always link it back to your website. Zerys.com is a free writer site where you only pay for the articles you use.
5.  Be Consistent. Set aside an hour a day to post and engage in social media. New articles should be posted on your social media pages, then shared to communities and groups of interest. Also, utilize Reddit.
6. Engage Influencers. Seek out those that already have a following, and invite them to post to your site. This will jump-start traffic for you. In exchange, offer to post on their sites.
7. Hire Experts. At some point, you’ll need help, and it is more cost-effective and productive to subcontract others to do the heavy lifting than hire in-house. SEO, marketing plans, PPC, and public relations are areas to consider. Experts in these areas are already set up and know how to effectively deliver results, so in the long run, it is a better option than you learning a new field — in addition to already running your business.