Do you know how many business owners use social media? According to Statista, 79% of small business owners in the United States use social media to connect with customers. It’s evident that social media is a huge part of every marketing strategy. However, along with growing your audience on social media (see below), another obstacle most accountants face on social media is getting engagement with your audience. Once you have built a large following, how can you increase your social media efforts in a cost effective and timely manner to get the most out of social media for your practice?

Social media engagement is not only about creating unique content that provides value, it’s also about building a relationship and establishing trust. Here are five easy and practical ways to help increase your engagement, without having to become a “social media expert:”

1. Build Your Audience.

This is a pre-requisite and probably one of the most overlooked aspects of getting engagement from social media for your practice. If you only have 15 followers on social media, no amount or quality of content will get you very much engagement. So the first step is to grow your audience by doing things like uploading your contact lists into your social accounts, joining groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and emailing your clients to ask them to follow you. In a recent webinar, we offered some great tips on how to best grow your social media audience.

2. Be Visual.

When you are on social media reviewing a stream of content from your network, what makes you stop scrolling? What compels you to click, to like, to share, to comment on something? Photos and videos are among the most shared content on social media:

• Images can result in an 85% interaction rate on Facebook and increased retweets by 35%.
• 51% of B2B marketers prioritized creating visual content assets in 2016.
• Video content will represent 74% of all internet traffic in 2017

Share photos (with permission) of your office staff, your clients, even the dog or cat that comes into visit you in the office. Produce some short video blog posts and share them. Share infographics or news articles that include intriguing graphs or photos.

3. Ask Questions.

Asking questions will provoke a response from users that can spark conversations. For example with our TaxBuzz service, we host a monthly #TaxBuzzChat on Twitter that asks questions about specific industry topics and uses that as a platform to engage end-users and industry experts. You can ask your audience questions about small business or tax topics, such as “What are your thoughts on the latest tax reform bill?”

4. Post and Engage

Yes, you are busy. However, if you can take just 10-15 minutes per day to review any likes or comments you have on social media and also to like and comment on posts from others, that should be enough. Whether it is a positive or negative question, comment or post, it is good to respond to clients or followers on social media. You can usually ignore things that are obviously spam, but be on the look-out for legitimate comments or questions from prospects or clients. Also try to share articles that might be helpful to small business owners or whoever your ideal clients might be. Companies like ours can also help you post relevant tax and small business accounting content to your audience.

5. Take advantage of mentions and hashtags.

When posting and sharing content, be sure to mention and tag the people that are involved in the post. Tag person whose quote you’re sharing. Also be sure to use hashtags on your posts to make sure that people can easily find your content, such as: #smallbusiness #tax #accounting

There are many different strategies you can try in order to increase your social media engagement, so it is beneficial to determine which tactics will fit best with your audience and your brand. Decide to see what will strengthen and build your presence. Consistency is key. Once you figure out which methods you are going to use to engage, make sure to maintain and keep up with it.

If you are an accounting, tax or bookkeeping professional and have questions about how you can generate more referrals from social media, contact us today at 1-800-442-2477 or set up some time speak with one of our accountant social media experts. We can help post tax and accounting content and also grow the referrals coming from social media.