We’ve known for a while that participating in social media is no longer an option. If you have a business, you have to be on social to compete in your industry. But simply being in this space will not yield successful results. Social media is only a great tool if your strategy to drive traffic weighs heavily on building audience trust & engagement.

Your audience is everything. They determine the success of your account based on the effort you put in. Accounts that have an organic and sincere engagement with their audience are far more trustworthy than those that only seek followers. Below are a few ways to connect with your audience authentically for optimal results. 

How do you build trust with your audience on social media

Don’t broadcast

If you’re structuring your social media like an RSS feed, you’re doing it wrong. Social media is not a place for publishers to list their stories. Users on social are looking to be intrigued by your content. Your strategy should include curated posts that are diverse, high quality, engaging, and on-trend with what specific platforms are known for. Keep it interesting.

Know your audience 

You must know who you’re speaking to before creating content that will engage your audience. There are over 4.8 billion social media users worldwide, and there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy.

Knowing your audience includes considering general factors such as age, gender identity, income, and location, but it doesn’t stop there. You also want an idea of your audience’s passions, challenges, goals, and interests.

Analytics from each platform can help you get a good idea of your audience. However, AI programs can dive deeper into who’s looking for your content. Once you know your audience, you can package compelling content to catch their attention. 

Create human connections

One of the best ways to build trust with your audience is to meet them where they are. Your content should show your audience you want to know them. In return, your content should allow them to see what your business is all about. Getting personal will inspire more engagement from your audience and set your account apart from others who are just there to push sales.

Social media began as and remains a medium for establishing real human connections. The more authentic your content is, the better your chance for establishing more organic engagement and serving as a hub for others to connect over similar interests. 

Diversify across platforms

It would be easier to engage your audience if the same demographics existed across all platforms. Sadly, this is not the case. Packaging your content includes knowing which demographics are primarily active on each platform and which types of content each platform’s algorithm pushes over others. 

For instance, Instagram used to be known for aesthetically pleasing photos or perfection–that’s not the case anymore. Now, it takes a variety of videos, photos, lives, and staying on top of trends for publishers to leverage Instagram’s most significant benefits. 

Show your creativity 

One of the best ways to stay authentic on social is to let your creativity shine over rigid posting guidelines. Users will not trust accounts that look like bots manage them. People are hyper-sensitive to online scams. Honestly, Millennials and Gen Z trust absolutely no one online. Your online presence is all you have. Make it good and have fun with it.

Challenges of building trust on social media

Unfortunately, building trust and online engagement is challenging and has kept some businesses from taking the leap. While the following obstacles shouldn’t deter you from entering the online space, they are good to keep in mind when creating content: 

• Unpredictability: The constant flexibility is social media’s biggest selling point and most significant hurdle. It allows you to pivot on a dime, but it can also instantly pull the rug out from under you. Diversifying your platform can help spread out your social media efforts to ensure all your hard work holds value if one platform goes off the radar.
•  Scammers & Bots: Yes, for every account on social media run by a well-intentioned human, many others are run by trolls, scammers, robots, and other users who want to cause trouble. Authenticity is the only way to stand out in a sea of worthless accounts. If your content looks like it was created without thought and exists only to sell, chances are you’ll get mistaken as untrustworthy by your audience. 
•  Consistency: ALL social media platforms demand regularity. Regularity means posting at dependable intervals across your platforms, taking into account when your audience is active. The process can become tedious, but staying consistent across the board is possible with a multi-platform social media management tool.

How can TA help? 

True Anthem can help you overcome the challenges of engaging your audience on social media while following the best practices to maintain it. Our tool uses AI technology to select your best-performing content and identify optimal times to post. We can select content your audience is already engaging with, which removes the guesswork. 

With integrated, easy-to-use calendars, content can be scheduled weeks or months in advance, helping you stay consistent. Plus, you can link all your social media accounts in one place, including analytics for your target audience. You only need one login to post to all accounts, with customized formatting for each platform.

Using our proprietary algorithms to optimize your content distribution will leave your team more time to be creative. Request a demo of True Anthem’s multi-platform social media management tool to see how we can help.