Engaging an audience on social media is no easy feat. Here’s how I did it for Valore and its family of brands, including SimpleTuition. The target audience was college students; the products included student loans and textbooks.

• The Piggy Campaign
  

Meet Piggy, a social media mascot I developed for SimpleTuition. Piggy likes to save money rather than spend it. Clean, simple visuals let SimpleTuition’s audience focus on messaging. The mascot was used to drive likes and click-throughs to blog posts and even revenue-earning tools like student loan comparison.

• Weekly e-cards
  

My strategy has always been to provide an audience with social content that isn’t available elsewhere. Not on a blog, not a landing page, not in an email campaign. There’s a lot of value in exclusive social media content that engages the audience and gives them a reason to keep coming back to your page. Even if it’s just for a laugh! Why? An entertained audience is a loyal audience.

• Shareable Imagery
  

Striking imagery paired with pithy messaging drives engagement. It also increases the chance that posts will be shared, which is an entirely free and effective way to increase your reach.