It’s a question that countless modern business owners and marketing professionals have asked themselves on numerous (and often frustration-filled) occasions: How do I increase social media engagement for my brand? And of course, this particular topic can present an especially tough challenge for outdoor brands, whose followers tend to spend more time outside the four walls of the home — and off the screens where social media proliferates — in pursuit of their outdoor passion of choice, whether it be hunting, fishing, boating, camping or a range of other pursuits in the great outdoors.
But have no fear, even if most of your ideal consumers spend substantially more time out in Mother Nature than indoors on Wi-Fi. Read on as we focus on how to increase engagement on social media for your outdoor brand — and give these eleven tried-and-true tactics from the pros at TBA Outdoors a try:
1. Carry on a conversation
Foster a dialogue with your followers by actively monitoring and responding to their social media posts, sharing user-generated content and user posts as stories, asking questions in posts, creating polls, etc. The more you interact with them, the more they’ll return the favor … and the closer to your brand they’ll feel.
2. Give it away now
Whether the offering at hand is a big prize or a small-ticket item, people love a giveaway — and few things are better at attracting attention, followers and engagement. At TBA Outdoors, we frequently set up organic giveaways for client frogg toggs, often using the brand’s Instagram account. (See an example here.) And to ensure follower engagement, we typically require some sort of action as a means of giveaway entry — with goals including follows, comments, friend tags, etc.).
3. Partner up
To build upon the successes of colleagues and create a win-win for both of your social accounts, seek out partnership opportunities and promote the joint ventures on social media when they become active. For example, frogg toggs’ Big Bass Bonanza Giveaway features frogg toggs and 10 partners. When the TBAO team posts about the contest on social media, we tag each partner to increase reach — with the hopes that the partners will share, as well.
Be sure, though, to select partners strategically. While any type of partnership can help your brand reach a larger audience and drive more engagement, an important part of this is selecting brand partners that make sense. Often, you’ll see a multi-brand giveaway and think, “Yeah, those brands don’t quite line up.” The best bet for an outdoor brand is to align with other brands that fit well with the outdoor lifestyle.
4. Keep it fresh
Regularly create and publish new and engaging content, and share it across all of your social channels. Popular (and easy-to-create) examples include TikTok videos, Instagram Reels, Facebook Live videos, etc.
5. Customize content
To ensure high levels of audience interest (and typically higher levels of engagement), tailor the copy in your content/post to your page’s core audience. On Facebook, information on your brand page’s top demographics can be found in page insights. And most businesses’ Instagram and Twitter pages offer similar tools and functionality.
6. Post at the peak
Pay attention to the days and times at which you post, as good timing can bring significantly increased attention for the content you share on social media. (Information regarding the peak days and times for maximum post exposure for your brand can also be found in page insights on Facebook.)
7. Get a feel for what works
Over time (and via some trial and error), you’ll begin to learn what works and what doesn’t work for your brand on social media. As you do, incorporate more of what works and less of what doesn’t. For example, at TBAO, holiday and sale graphics haven’t performed especially well on frogg toggs’ social pages. So instead, we’ve started using lifestyle images on the brand’s sale posts, and using user-generated content/pro staff/influencer content for holiday posts — all of which has resulted in more views, shares and all-around engagement.
8. Add visual appeal
The most effective images/videos on social media are those with the kind of visual appeal that stops users in their tracks. While sharing user-generated content with some regularity is recommended, most photos your outdoor brand shares should ideally be professionally taken and edited, and organized in a way to create a cohesive look across the brand’s social channels.
9. Ensure image/copy cohesion
Often, those posting for brands on social media are simply given images and asked to create accompanying copy that they feel makes sense for the post. While this works, the best situation here would be if the person posting actually had a relationship to the photos/videos, e.g. they were there, shot the photos/videos, created the scene idea, etc. This helps support the creation of truly authentic and meaningful content, as it allows the person posting to tell a real story — and consumers love real stories.
10. Stand out from the crowd
Strive to generate post ideas that stand out and give users another thing to appreciate about your outdoor brand’s social efforts. For example, maybe it’s a “Music Monday” where you share 5-10 songs from Spotify and drive people to go listen, or a “Weekend Inspo” post/story where you share others’ content on a Friday that pushes your audience to get out and have an awesome weekend. Things like this stand out.
11. Have fun, and be real
So much of social media dialogue attempts to convey an “excited” feel … think lots of exclamation points, all caps, etc. In reality, most of the time, that’s not real at all. It’s better to be calm, cool and collected. Speak to your audience the way they want to be spoken to. It’s simple, but not especially common.
Could your outdoor brand use the help of a group of experienced marketing professionals to effectively boost your social media following and social media engagement? At TBA Outdoors, our fully integrated marketing firm boasts a team of seasoned specialists (and outdoors fanatics) who can cover all aspects of marketing — including social media, email marketing, SEO, brand strategy, creative, e-commerce, analytics, public relations and much more — all in one place. And as certified brand strategists, we can also help you with the big-picture adjustments sometimes needed put your outdoor brand on a course to long-term success.
To get started with professional guidance ranging from a simple website analysis to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost your outdoor brand’s overall performance and identity, contact us today.
