What type of content do you think would work best? Should it be entertaining, informative, a bit salesy? What is a perfect formula?
This depends on the outcome you are looking for. If you create entertaining content, it might mean that your following will be more engaged the next time you decide to post, informative content might be a way to educate a potential prospect if there is a longer sales cycle to consider and salesy content might mean you are looking for an immediate return from your social media content. If you know what your outcome is, it may help you make that decision.
In terms of a formula, I think it’s highly dependent on what your preference as a creator is. It’s very important to be consistent when posting on social as I’m sure you have heard before, and I tend to pick the informative option as I’m not particularly entertaining and I don’t enjoy pitching frequently, but I do like to help people, so putting out informative content is very sustainable for me, I don’t find that difficult which means I can post that type of content and I enjoy doing it.
I think it’s a misconception that you can’t be salesy on social media, I think there are a few examples which disprove that hypothesis, but if you think of social like a relationship, if you had a friend who was always trying to convince you to do something, that would become pretty tiring after a while and my thoughts are that you damage that relationship doing that.
The flip side of that is that if you only put out entertaining content, you might end up being one of those content creators who has a big audience, but can’t monetise it, so it almost becomes unsustainable.
I personally like and use an approach where you help people first and then tell them where they can find you if you need help with a particular service or you are interested in a product. Some people refer to it as reciprocal, I like the concept that in a business transaction, there is always one party who is taking more of a risk than the other and if you have already helped them get a step closer to what they are trying to achieve, it means they are taking less risk and it means a purchase is more probable.
What are the things that can level up your engagement?
I would think about cause and effect regarding engagement. What are you doing which is providing the cause, which produces the effect that would increase engagement. I think people often want the effect without first providing the cause. Earl Nightingale would say it’s like the person who sits in front of the fireplace and says give me heat and I’ll add the wood.
So think about what you’re doing which makes you different than every other post that they could be looking at instead? Because if you don’t, if you are just doing the same as what others are doing, most likely you won’t cut through the noise.
Putting a budget behind posts is underrated and perhaps underpriced, people work an awful lot on their content and you can get in front of people very quickly if you promote it.
Other small things might be:
Consider an update on your profile images – ours was a Christmas hat – it can add some comedy and may get some engagement or attention that you wouldn’t otherwise have gotten and shows you are active if people decide to follow.
A gift guide for Christmas of your products/services.
Some of the big brands have been supporting a Charity which may buy some good will if you don’t want to promote over the holiday period.
Providing it’s relevant and your followers would be interested, consider sharing someone else’s post and mentioning them if they have done something interesting, it’s likely they would want to reciprocate somehow and providing it’s interesting, your followers will be fine with it, it doesn’t take a lot from you, but it means a lot to whoever you are mentioning.
What would you advise to focus on?
Important when posting to know what it is you are trying to achieve.
Focus on them. Zig would say you can have everything you want if you help other people get what they want. An example of that might be:
Gift ideas for certain people e.g. for a dad/wife etc. insert your business somewhere.
Competition gift of some kind may get high entrants because people are buying and expecting gifts from others, just make sure that you have enough time to send it if you get a winner as it might be a bit of an anti climax if they don’t receive their prize when Christmas is over. Also relevant to your business.