20 Ways You Can Encourage Engagement

The Social Media Club of Charlottesville had an open forum last night where attendees split into discussion groups and brainstormed various ideas for using social media and engaging customers. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend myself, but they posted photos from one of their brainstorming sessions, listing ways to encourage engagement through social media channels. There are 20 great ideas listed, which you'll also find listed below the photos.

 
 

1. Ask for feedback and/or ask questions at the end of a post.
2. Comment on other's blogs.
3. Barrier to comments BAD (in other words, don't make it difficult for people to leave comments).
4. Get someone to be the first commenter.
5. Mix in some company info (i.e. birthdays, successes, etc.) on your Facebook page.
6. Do a series of blog posts on a sub-topic.
7. Create a Facebook sharing app.
8. Use "list" posts (and lay it out in a simplified format).
9. Mixing it up (video, audio, text).
10. Guest posts (meaning asking people to guest post on your blog, or you guest posting on other related blogs).
11. Be extremely opinionated (or extreme).
12. Go against the grain.
13. Run Twitter searches for people with questions; answer with a link to your blog post (same could be done on LinkedIn).
14. Create "celebrity" status through opinions.
15. Contests/giveaways.
16. SEO tactics.
17. Good timing (current event, etc.).
18. Every Friday, just ask a question.
19. Keep up with regular posts.
20. Put recent comments in sidebar.

What are your ideas for encouraging engagement?