One word: CARE.
Social media is from people for people. At the end of every account you interact with is a person. And all social media accounts are run by, surprise again, people.
That said, here are 10 ways you can bring value to your community.
1. Ask people for direct feedback.
Twitter is all about 1-on-1. A straight up “What do you think of us?” shows humility and exposes new people to your content at the same time. Great response rates!
Here’s an example from one of my Twitter accounts:
2. Ask thought-provoking questions.
I also like to ask people questions they have to think about a bit. Makes you instantly more memorable. You can do this 1-on-1…
…or like Rachel Rofé just post them to your feed. She gets a ton of answers on hers at less than 100k followers.
3. Soundbites w/ video
Gary Vee routinely gets 15-25% engagement on his videos on Instagram. That’s INSANE. All big platforms have heavily been pushing towards video and 1-minute soundbites with video are a GREAT way to keep people engaged.
Tip: Crosspost these to Twitter, they also do really well there.
4. Blend in promotional content
Some accounts just post blatant promos for their content in-between their regular stuff, which stands out like a sore thumb. However, if you make a creative that’s in line with your other stuff it’ll blend in nicely and don’t “interrupt” the experience.
For example – can you guess which one’s the “ad” here at first sight?
It’s hard right? It’s this one:
5. Use your story to drive people to content
If you have a verified account on Instagram, you can put links on your story posts. Nobody knows that.
I don’t want to keep using Gary Vee, but it took forever to even find another account that does this.
You can put a link to any piece of content on posts on your story and people can swipe up to read/view it right on Instagram.
This new feature converts like CRAZY.
Of course it’s also a great way to show your day etc. so don’t JUST use it for promo but I think that’s obvious 🙂
6. Wallpapers
This is one of my favorite, recent new ideas: give people content they can use again and again, without you having to publish anything.
Wallpapers are a great example. You can post them on your Instagram story and tell people to screenshot them and then when you have a whole batch, publish them as a collection, like Gary did here.
I’m using them all the time!
7. Turn followers into educators
People love to tell their friends what to do. Give them something they can then take and educate others with. “Tag” posts work really well for this! “Tag a friend that needs to hear this” for example.
8. Games
Play short and fun little games with followers, like this one:
Anything that gives people a certain result makes them more likely to comment with that result and tag friends to see what they’ll get!
9. Quotes
They’re overused, but that’s because they work great. Especially if you have a lot of content you can draw from to make original ones, you don’t have to regurgitate what’s out there at all!
Here’s one I made to show how Entrepreneur Magazine could do this:
10. Actionable Resources
Lastly, give people tools that are actionable, useful and don’t take long to use. A simple link or single 3-step tactic they can execute on right away can make the difference between a productive or slow day, like the emailga.me for example:
You could also show a GIF here of how to make a GIF, flag your emails etc.
Remember, social media is FROM people, FOR people. As long as you keep that in mind with every post you make, you’ll do just fine.