I'm Here, Alive, and Paying Attention on Social Media

June, 2019

Social media engagement starts by talking to the account next door. Before you know it, you’re in a committed, but open, relationship.

Building a social media relationship with your followers means extending a hand and putting in regular effort to show that you care.

1. Say Hello, but do it differently. Heart those posts, emoji yourself silly, comment what you really mean.

If you’re a home inspector looking to break into your local realtor scene on Instagram, authentically following realtors, mortgage lenders, roofers, mold remediation companies, and anyone else that is part of the home buying and selling chain, is the way to go. These other accounts should ethically mirror your business and values. And you should want to be following them, not just following with the hopes they will follow you in return.

Do not, under any circumstances, use the follow/unfollow method of gaining an audience. Bad idea. Bad Instagram account. Bad social media user.

Once you follow, you gotta engage. You’re on social media and the social part means that you step away from your account and you support the accounts that you love. Authentically.

2. Reposting, retweeting, and sharing are great ways to share the creative content of another, with credit, and gain a wider audience scope.

Instagram makes it a little tricky, because their Terms of Use state that you must have written permission from the account holder before you can repost. A direct message or a comment on their post asking for the OK will suffice.

Once that’s taken care of, you are going to need a 3rd party app to repost. We use the Repost app because it’s been around for awhile, free, and easy to use.

On Twitter, you can retweet someone else’s post, with a comment of your own. Same with the Facebook share feature. #easypeasy

3. Building trust on social media can be a whole separate article, but it’s what you want to be doing every single time you’re on any social media platform. Trust is the source of all your actions.

Keep your content on-brand, original, and high quality. That doesn’t mean professional videos and photos every time. It’s really about knowing how your audience wants to be entertained. Like we always say, you have to keep it interesting.

Ask your followers to create their own content. This is called user generated content (UGC) and depending on the generation you’re working with, it can be a vital key to your social media engagement.

Reply to every comment, keep engaged, step outside of your account, and share your business love. People want to be seen on social media, so it’s up to you to create a space that allows for your time and theirs.