The Key to Success on Social Media
- Shannon Peel
- 4 days ago
- 10 min read
How to Succeed on Social Media in 2026
Engagement is still the secret sauce of social media success. If your goal is to connect with your ideal customers, it’s not enough to post and hope they notice you—you need to show up in the right conversations, add value, and get noticed.
This guide focuses on practical ways to engage with your audience, build your brand, and turn followers into customers.
Give People a Reason to Follow Your Story
Your audience wants a story they can relate to, a reason to stick around. Sharing interesting, useful, or entertaining content cuts through the noise. Ideas include:
Behind-the-scenes glimpses of your work or team.
Special offers or exclusive insights.
Short, engaging facts, tips, or micro-stories.
Pro tip: Look for posts with moderate engagement—small communities that actively comment and respond. You want interaction, not just broadcast hoping to get eyeballs.
How to successfully engage on the right social media posts:
To stand out on social media, put aside an hour a day to engage with other people's posts. Engage by making a comment or asking a question to start a conversation. The more often you write comments the faster you get noticed by those in your target market. Hitting "like" is not enough, though it will help to build your newsfeed. When you hit like, that person's future posts will show up in your feed to comment on.
Engage Daily
The easiest way to be noticed is to engage consistently:
Comment thoughtfully on posts from your ideal audience.
Ask questions to spark conversations.
“Like” posts to show support—but don’t rely on likes alone. Comments carry weight.
Tip: Avoid posts with hundreds of comments. Your engagement will get lost. Focus on people who post regularly and reflect your ideal customer avatar.
Find the right content to comment on social media.
On X, Bluesky, Threads:
Use list feature to create feeds of interesting people. Check the list consistently to engage with your ideal audience criteria. The more you engage the more people will follow you.
All Social Media Platforms:
Make a list of profiles you want to follow and check in weekly.
Track hashtags relevant to your niche and search them daily.
Use search to discover competitor posts and potential clients.
Clean up your newsfeed: follow those who matter, mute or block spam.
Create a spreadsheet with links to profiles of people you want in your newsfeed. Go through the list once a week to find content to engage with and start adding these people into your newsfeed.
Make a list of hashtags you find interesting and search them daily for engaging content.
Use the search bar to find posts using your keywords to find people who are talking about what you do. You will discover what your competitors are posting about and potential clients. To improve your newsfeed, engage with people you want and block the spammy posters you don't want to see. If you do this regularly, your newsfeed will become more valuable.
On LinkedIn
On LinkedIn:
Engage before you post. The algorithm rewards active commentors.
If you have Premium, save 2nd and 3rd connections to lists to track their posts.
After engaging for a month or two, send connection requests with a personalized note
Schedule a follow-up 2–4 weeks later to nurture the relationship.
If you want to improve your post's impressions - You must engage with other people's posts. Otherwise the algorithm will not show your posts and you'll struggle to get 10 impressions.
If you can afford the premium to help you prospect on LinkedIn, you can save 2nd and 3rd connections to lists, which will show you their latest posts for you to comment on. This makes it easier for you to get noticed by people you want in your ideal audience but don't know you yet. After commenting on their posts for a month or two reach out with a request to connect saying...
Should we connect?
If you want <insert a service you offer>
If you want to know about <insert the topic you post about>
If you enjoy <insert the type of content you create - blog - podcasts - etc>
If you struggle with <insert the problem you solve>
If you want to <insert the result you provide others>
If you said yes to any of these - Let's connect
Once you've connected on Linkedin make a task to reach out and book a one on one 2-4 weeks later
Tip: Don’t bother commenting on posts with lots of comments and lots of likes. Just like your posts, your comments will get lost and chances are, the person has someone else monitoring the profile, so you aren’t really engaging with them.
The top people to engage with are those who match your ideal customer avatar and post regularly on the platform. If they aren't posting on one platform, check other platforms to see where they hang out.
Which Social Media Platform is your favourite?
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
TicTok
Give people reasons to follow your story
You need to show them your band story and give them something interesting to engage with, which in the noise of social media can be time consuming and difficult. Here are some ideas: share special offers, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and entertaining facts. Post regularly and engage with other people’s content so they will come over and check out your content.
Find posts by people who have a few comments on them and a few likes so you know they have an engaged audience, which they engage with, and they will respond to your message. You want engaged followers, not just followers.
Create multimedia content
Mix it up. Use video, photos, graphics, carousels, and reels to engage different types of learners and scrollers. Test new formats, but stay consistent with your brand message.
Tip: People need repetition to remember your story. Cycle three core messages for a month, using different visuals or formats, then refresh your storytelling with new goals.
Post photos, graphics, and video to engage your audience in different ways. Don’t be boring, change it up and continually test new ideas. However, make sure you are consistent in your posting, and you stay within your brand messaging guidelines. Don’t have brand messaging guidelines, well – You my friend need to become a MarketAPeel member and start creating your brand story with MarketAPeel – Level 1 membership is free to get you started. Tip: People need some repetition to get a message through their skulls and deep into their minds. Repeat your message using the same layout and message with different images or different media styles. Cycle three messages through for a month and then switch it up and start telling a different part of the story with a new objective and goal.
Master Your Brand Story
Social media storytelling has evolved. Gone are the days when professional copywriters controlled brand narratives. Today, stories unfold with every like, comment, and share. This democratization is powerful—but it can also dilute your message if you don’t control your narrative.
Influencers have perfected self-branding, aesthetics, and multi-post storytelling—but most small businesses don’t need global reach, they need local relevance. Instead of paying for influencer shout-outs that may not convert, focus on telling your story directly to the audience that matters most to your business.
How to Tell Brand Stories on Social Media.
I first started hearing about Facebook in 2005 and from there quickly started connecting on other emerging social media profiles of the time, some no longer in existence. Facebook changed the way we connect with each other and how we tell and consume stories. Experts in telling stories in sound bites and trailers evolved as we moved into the digital realm of storytelling on social media. The stories were no longer written by the professionals, they evolved with each comment, like, and share. This method of storytelling has rapidly fractured brand stories and confused the marketplace about what unknown, small business, service-based businesses were about. In the game of getting eyeballs and followers, the stories became not about the brand but about whatever the audience would engage with leading brands to evolve into celebrities and the new business model of influencer marketing. Influencers are pros at looking good, entertaining people, inspiring them, and motivating them. They tell a story about themselves over multi posts with pleasing aesthetics and short prose. To get to the level of an influencer, one must spend hours on social media engaging with other influencers who are like them in the hopes of sharing their audience and finding new followers. Those who gamed the system soon found that the platforms turned against them and soon the numbers no longer mattered and those who understood how social media worked, focused on their niche, and engaged with their audiences on a different level. Influencer marketing worked for big global brands whose customers would buy what their favourite influencers would showcase. It didn’t work so well for local businesses because the influencers audience was global. Many small businesses wasted money on influencer marketing thinking the audience lived where the influencer did. They did not know to ask how many of your followers live in the area. It didn’t take long for small businesses to realize that giving away a free product for a selfie with an influencer did not result in increased sales and they began to push back. Influencers know how to brand themselves and how to tell their brand stories to garner a following and convert that following into dollars. It isn’t cheap or easy to tell a brand story into the sphere of influencer. It takes a team of talented content creators working endlessly to tell the story of your brand’s life and actively go out into social media to find new followers and entice them to commit to being a part of the brand’s audience. Those who understands the audiences on each platform will be successful at building a following, however, that doesn’t mean those followers will convert into customers that takes a deeper type of storytelling most influencers ignore in their race to the most follower’s championships. If you want to succeed on social media by building a following and then converting them into customers, you need a full brand storytelling funnel strategy. And it starts by understanding each platform and the audiences you will find there.
Tools I use for Social Media Content Posting
Posting daily builds credibility, but it can be time-consuming. Social media automation tools help:
Zoho Social – integrates with Zoho One for small business management.
Loomly – great for content libraries and scheduling.
Meta Business Suite – draft and schedule posts for Instagram and Facebook.
Social Oomph – excellent for evergreen content queues.
Go High Level - a powerful CRM, automation, and marketing tool
Choose a tool that fits your workflow, budget, and preferred platforms.
Even though you are spending time engaging, you still need to post to let those who visit your profile know why they will want to connect to you. Ensuring you
The best way is to post on each platform directly everyday, but that isn't always practical for the solopreneur or small business owner... to make it easier, use a scheduling program.
To save you time, use a social automation posting tool like, zoho social, to schedule your posts and ensure your content calendar is full. - I've used Hootsuite, Loomly, Buzzsumo, meta suite and currently use zoho social because it is part of Zoho One's 40 apps that work together to manage everything a small business needs measured for one small rate.
All the social automated schedulers work the same. It comes down to ease of use, budget, and unique features.
I started out using Hootsuite, but it hasn't improved it's features in 20 years.Though I prefer to support local business, Hootsuite is too limited compared to other programs.
I like Loomly for the content library you can create for ease of reposting in the future. Meta business has a drafts content library for future scheduling for Facebook and Instagram. The ability to save content and easily reschedule it again in the future is helpful.
Social Oomph is amazing for evergreen content posting because you can create a basket of content in a que that automatically puts a post back in the que for the future. No need to schedule each post as the system will post based on the weekly schedule you create. example Mondays every 2 hours - Tuesdays every 5 hours - Saturdays none - etc... It is an easy connect to Twitter - I still haven't figured out how to connect it to other platforms, though there is a way but you'll probably need a programer to help you.
Focus on Quality, Not Quantity
Prioritize followers who align with your ideal customer profile.
Avoid chasing likes or massive follower counts.
Engagement beats vanity metrics every time.
Social media success isn’t about the number of followers—it’s about building meaningful relationships that convert into real-world results. Spend the time to comment, share, and engage authentically, and your audience will notice.
One-Hour-a-Day Social Media Strategy: Engage, Grow, Convert
You don’t need to spend all day on social media to get results. One focused hour a day, done right, can grow your audience, strengthen your brand, and turn followers into customers. Here’s how to structure it.
Minute 0–10: Scan & Curate
Check your newsfeed for posts from your ideal customers or industry peers.
Look for posts with a few likes/comments—engaged audiences respond to thoughtful comments.
Save links or profiles to engage with later if needed.
Tip: Track 5–10 profiles daily that match your ideal customer avatar.
Minute 10–30: Engage Thoughtfully
Comment on 5–10 posts. Ask questions, add value, or share insights.
Avoid generic likes—comments get you noticed and start conversations.
Skip highly-commented posts; your voice will get lost.
Pro move: Focus on posts that align with your niche and brand story. Quality engagement beats quantity.
Minute 30–40: Post Your Own Content
Share one piece of content per day:
Behind-the-scenes glimpse
Tip, insight, or micro-story
Short video or carousel
Keep it on-brand and consistent with your messaging.
Tip: Recycle messages in different formats—repeat 3 core messages for a month, then switch.
Minute 40–50: Hashtag & Discovery
Search hashtags relevant to your niche.
Look for conversations or questions where you can provide value.
Add new profiles to your engagement list.
Bonus: Create a spreadsheet of hashtags, profiles, and engagement notes for future use.
Minute 50–60: Follow-Up & Scheduling
Send connection requests on LinkedIn or other platforms where you’ve been engaging. Personalize:
“If you want [service/topic], or enjoy [content type], let’s connect!”
Schedule future posts using a social media tool: Zoho Social, Loomly, or Meta Business Suite.
Queue evergreen content for repeat posting to maintain visibility without extra effort.
Extra Tips for Maximum Impact
Consistency beats volume: Daily, focused engagement grows influence faster than occasional heavy posting.
Focus locally: Small businesses convert better when your audience is in your area—don’t chase global vanity metrics.
Measure & refine: Track which posts and comments spark responses, and double down on what works.
Storytelling matters: Always tie your posts and comments back to your brand story and the value you provide.
Result: One hour a day = a stronger brand, a growing network of ideal customers, and a steady stream of potential clients who know, like, and trust you.
Conclusion
Social media isn’t about luck—it’s about strategy, consistency, and engagement. By showing up every day, telling your brand story, and connecting authentically with your ideal audience, you turn followers into loyal customers. One focused hour a day can transform your online presence, build trust, and create real business results.
The key is action: engage thoughtfully, post consistently, and refine your approach as you go. Stop chasing vanity metrics and start building meaningful relationships that drive your business forward. Your audience is out there—go find them, show them your story, and make them care.
