The right social media platform, unique content, and posting consistency all lead to an engaged social media audience.

Key takeaways:

• Choose the social media platform your audience uses most, then focus on building an organic following.

• Quality over quantity is best. Do a bit of A/B testing to see what kinds of content most engage your audience.

• Building an engaged social media audience requires time. Be consistent.

Using social media platforms allows you to reach a wide audience with a variety of content that can be designed to appeal to selective segments of that audience.

Joe Grace, Mbition’s social media manager, said social media marketing is an engaging and important way to interact with potential partners and clients. Below are Grace’s tips for getting the most out of your social media platforms:

No. 1: Learn where your audience resides. Which social media platform does your target audience use the most? Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Instagram? Focus much of your time on social networks that you think best can be used to engage with your audience.

No. 2: The best audience is built organically. Sure, you can encourage page likes or follower growth through campaigns with most social media platforms. But the followers most likely to lead to conversions come to your social media page organically — those who have seen the content you have put on your page, which others shared with them.

The followers who are most likely to lead to conversions are those who have come to your social media page organically — those who have seen the content you have put on your page, which others shared with them.

“These people have decided that your content is worth following, to engage with the community you have built, and decided to continue to click on the posts you publish. All of this activity leads to more organic growth. To garner this type of organic audience, you need content, and more specifically, unique content that has value to your audience.

No. 3: Focus on quality over quantity. You can litter your social page with content, but if it’s content that no one is interested in engaging with, you’re wasting everybody’s time. Put different types of content out on social media and study what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Continue to refine your content until you are satisfied with the engagement it is garnering.

No. 4: Failure will happen. That’s okay. Most of what you try will fail at first. Building an engaged social media audience requires time as well as trial and error. The important part is not to get discouraged. One of the biggest keys to growing an engaged audience is consistency. This allows the audience to know that your brand is a regular source of content and allows you to better study what is and is not working.

From: “Maximize Your Marketing: Top tips and strategies for real estate professionals,” Mbition, 2017.