Social media strategy is more than just posting on Facebook twice a day. If you’re in the middle of a Facebook or Twitter campaign and it doesn’t seem to be working, you may be asking yourself, “why aren’t people engaging with my content?”

Good question.

There are usually a few reasons why you aren’t getting the kind of online engagement you’re looking for, but it all comes down to CONTENT. Content is and will always be king on the Internet and it should be the focus of your social media strategy. If you aren’t producing valuable, interesting content for your audience, you’ve given them no reason to interact with you. Plain and simple.

Making Content the Focus of Your Social Media Strategy

If your focus has been to sell yourself or your product, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you are doing it all wrong. Your primary focus should be relationship building. Engage your fans and followers online and get them to make you a part of their social network.  Sell yourself second.

As yourself these questions:

1) Do I know why people come to my page?  If not, start with finding the answer. Find out why people engage with you and give them what they want!  For example, if you are a CPA firm – why should followers engage with you online? Is it because you make accounting easy to understand? Is it your sparkling personality or because your posts are funny?  Ask WHY.

2) Do you broadcast or share?  There is a distinction between the two.  Are you posting links to your blog posts and website or are you inviting your reader’s opinion? Share something interesting and tell them why it is interesting, not just a link.

3) Are you catching your audience while they are online?  Perhaps second to having great content is sharing content when it can be seen. Social media strategy 101 states that if people can’t see your content they won’t engage with you.  Consider when your followers are most likely to be online and post at those times.

4) Do you have a call to action?  Every once in a while it is ok to ask your audience to like a post, share a link or re-tweet something.  Remind them that your content is valuable to others they may know.

5) Who follows you?  This could have been the first question.  Knowing who follows you is key in developing a social media strategy.  Are you working with a certain follower profile?  Knowing your audience can keep you from wasting time and energy on a strategy that will never work.

Social media should be focused on engagement.  Your social media strategy should be focused on providing content that solicits participation, gets people talking about you and regularly touches your audience.  After you ask yourself the five questions above, look at your analytic tools, metrics and Facebook insights.  What gets your audience talking? What engages them to participate with you?

It takes more than just posting a few times a day to engage your audience, but don’t be discouraged.  Once you know who your audience is, why they come to you, when they are online and how to share you’ll be able to determine the content that is right for you and right for them!