Today, I’m going to start with a request for a local Interior Design Company, Keeping Good Company. They responded to my question with “what are some ways to engage your audience for more commenting and communication?” 

This brings me to another reason I asked that question, which was exactly what they are asking about, how to encourage engagement. I wanted to encourage engagement on my own social media accounts, and it worked. Whether you personally use social media or not, your customers do. The average time spent on social media is a little over 2 hours per day per person. Establishing a social media presence, building a following and engaging them effectively with quality content is tough, but necessary. Social media channels, particularly Facebook awards your social media efforts when you receive engagement from your community. This could be in the form of likes, comments, or shares. Facebook takes note and sees that the information you are engaging in must be important so not only will it continue to show you more information like that, it will rank the information higher in the algorithms. 

For example, referring back to the local Interior Design Company, Keeping Good Company I mentioned earlier. If they shared a before and after post of a job they worked on, and I liked it and shared it, Facebook will take note and show me more of their posts in my feed and/or other companies like that that I may also be interested in. If I was one of those people who just scroll on and never show the love, you know those people, well Facebook would stop showing their posts as much in their feed. With all that being said, it’s important to develop content that is eye-catching and interesting enough for someone to stop, read, and engage. 

Here are a few ways to encourage engagement. 
Ask simple questions - This could be something such as “do you prefer summer or winter?” Easy enough to answer. If you can make it about your business or even industry, even better. 

Use gifs or emoji’s as an option for your community to answer a question. Example - drop a gif for how you feel about your Monday, or which emoji represents the start to the typical work week? You would assume you would get either the muscle arm or maybe the crying emoji. Whatever it is, it will most likely ignite a bit of humor. Not all content has to revolve around your actual product or service, so this type of post is just fine. 

When making a Facebook post, there is a multitude of ideas to use. 
-You can create a poll with or without images. I do this quite a bit in my Facebook group for this podcast. It can be a powerful tool in learning about what your audience wants or doesn’t want. 

-Going live. This will send a notification to your community that you’re live and tune in. 

-Check-in feature. Asking your clients or customers to check-in is a great feature. When someone checks into your establishment, their friends see that on their timeline and then Facebook will ask 24 hours later if the person would like to leave a review. 
Now switching to Instagram - Encouraging emojis like mentioned before is definitely an easy way to get your audience to respond. Pro-tip for you… the first sentence of your post needs to be powerful enough that the person will actually stop and read the rest of the post. There are many opinions on short vs long content, but honestly, I feel you need to watch which type of posts resonates most with your audience. I prefer to read and share short and sweet types of posts. But, if longer works for you and your business, then do that. 

Contests, where you ask your community to tag others for a chance to win, maybe one of the easiest ways to encourage engagement. But of course, you have to offer up a great prize in re