What Do I Post on Social Media to Get Engagement?

 

I just got this email from a financial advisor the other day. And he said I recently learned a little bit about the algorithm for Facebook and LinkedIn and learned that what I was doing. Posting links to blogs that we wrote was the worst way to interact with people on social media and try to get engagement. So he asked do you have any advice for this? I'm not a marketer I'm a financial adviser.

What am I supposed to be posting? If I'm not posting links back to my blog it's a great question and it's something we're going to dive into quickly today.

So I'm Samantha Russell from Twenty over Ten and FMG Suite and today we are going to talk about the social media algorithms and what you should do if you really want to build engagement for your brand on social media so first things first let's talk a little bit about the algorithms. It doesn't matter what platform we are talking about. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram at the end of the day, what do they want people to do? They want you to spend as much time on their platform as possible, right? Because once you click something, and go away, you are no longer on their platform. You can't see their ads it's not beneficial to them. So whenever you're creating content on social media, keep that in mind, how can you keep somebody on the platform longer? This is why if you create a video like the one I'm talking with today rather than upload it as a link out to YouTube. You can upload it native into Facebook. You can upload that video file or to LinkedIn and it will keep people longer on their platform. Same thing where if you do have a great article or a blog post that you wrote rather than just linking to it, you can create a big commentary at the top and list out some of the key facts and touch points that you talk about in the blog post so that people have to read your synapses and your comments a little bit longer, which keeps them on the platform longer at the end of the day. Yes, you do want to still share links out to your blog or your website. But that shouldn't be every single thing you post.

So, a good rule of thumb is post things that are going to build engagement and create conversations about 60% of the time and the other maybe 30 or 40% of the time you can post links or articles back to your own content. But when you're sharing your content, make sure that you're doing one of these things.

Offering a quick take of what someone will learn if they take the time to click it and read it. You want to tell them why they should read it.

Offer a differing opinion about let's say you're sharing a link to the New York Times. Give a difference of opinion or why you think the article got something wrong.

You can also share a really compelling stat or really good piece of information that somebody who reads the article will get to find.

Share a quote from the article. So you never want to just add a link to a piece of content without giving some reason why someone should read it or what they'll learn if they choose to click on it.

So one of those four things is crucial. The other thing when you're not posting links back to other articles. What should you do? Well there's a lot of things you can do. You can start a conversation by asking a question. Right, so, here in Pennsylvania, where I'm located, we had a crazy snow week this week. A blizzard three days in a row. The kids were out of school if I was trying to build a really robust local Facebook profile engage with my local community to get more local business. I might share something like: Can you believe it? Three snow days in a row with emoji face someone grabbing their face at their hands and say drop a meme below. That best describes how you're feeling with the kids being out of school for three days in a row and let people engage with it that way.

So not every single post needs to be about the services you provide or tax strategies or financial planning, it can also just be about building engagement and learning and engaging with the people on social media. So hopefully that gives you some good ideas for what to do rather than just post a link to your blog. And if you have any questions for our team of how we can help you, please reach out and don't forget to subscribe to this channel so that every week you'll get notified when we drop a new video to help you market your business better.

Related: How Financial Advisors Can Attract More Clients Using the Mere Exposure Effect