Measuring engagement is one of the most important ways you can assess the success of your social media marketing. Content success can be gauged by analytics and this can help bring in new followers.
Content that elicits any kind of reaction from users is considered engagement. This can be likes, comments, shares, or reactions.
Although likes and comments might be considered superficial measures of success, they can still be helpful in telling the algorithm to push your content out to more people.
If you want to grow your audience or make people more aware of your brand, it is important to pay attention to how engaged they are.
One way people become trapped when using social media is by using techniques that are ineffective, like trying to get more followers by following other users indiscriminately or by commenting and liking random posts.
Some people try to get more followers by buying them, but this actually harms their engagement. The limited engagement growth that might occur is NOT worth the time it takes.
Ways to Increase Social Media Engagement
1. Don’t Just Sell
Many people make the mistake of trying too hard to sell their services or products on social media. It’s important for your audience to know what you can do for them, but no one wants to follow or engage with a bunch of ads.
It’s essential to maintain a balance between advertising your business and being useful to your followers. It has been suggested that 80% of your content should be value-based, and 20% should sell your product or service.
What you consider valuable may vary depending on your audience, so it can be helpful to see what content you have posted in the past that has performed well and learn from that for future content.
You can also find out what your audience wants to see by asking them directly. Your content should aim to be one (or all) of the following things: entertaining, educational, or motivational.
2. Follow the Trends
If you want to increase your social media following, consider using trends. If you want your post to be seen by more people, use trending music, hashtags, or memes.
This content is also more likely to be found on discovery pages, as it is related to the interests of some users.
Although trends may often be associated with popular dances on TikTok or funny photos, they can also be much more than that. A trend can be anything that is popular or trending at a particular time, especially in relation to news and events going on in the world or conversations being had on social media.
If you want to increase engagement on your site, post content that is related to what people are actually experiencing in their lives. This will create an emotional connection, and people are more likely to interact with things they have an emotional investment in.
However, being creative when following trends is essential. People don’t want to see the same thing happening repetitively. If you want to make a trend your own, try to find a way to relate it to your industry. This will help make it something worth talking about.
Creating this conversation is how you increase engagement.
People are still watching a lot of short-form video content and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change. This means that on average, short-form videos are engaged with 53.9% of the time. TikTok’s success is now spreading to other platforms, as Instagram introduced its own version of the popular short-form video app with Reels. Instagram is continuing to emphasize and reward users for creating and sharing videos on the platform.
3. Make Your Brand Personal
Although algorithms can be difficult to decipher, there is one thing that we can be certain of. Social media encourages social interactions.
A company is more personable when customers can see a face associated with it. This makes them feel more comfortable and connected to the company. Creating relationships with people is essential to encourage engagement.
Faces are an easy way to generate engagement on your videos, feeds, and stories. Making a human connection through your product photos and graphics can create a strong showing.
Most people would rather buy from a brand that is down-to-earth and relatable, rather than one that feels cold and out of touch. Don’t be afraid to show your authentic self, including your mistakes, when planning your social media calendar.
Instead of targeting the same audience, try taking a book from their page on how to appear relatable and create authentic relationships. This could be a great way to increase your engagement.
4. Post at Optimal Times
The optimal time to post content varies from company to company. Your social media content strategy should be tailored to your target audience. Figure out when they are active on social media and create content accordingly.
A businessman who works a 9-5 job is most active during his lunch break or after he gets home from work.
You should also think about the best days to post. Some brands would be most successful if they posted over the weekend, while others would do better during the work week.
Although chronological feeds no longer exist to a large extent, posts are still ranked according to when they were published. When you post when your audience is inactive, your content is less likely to be seen because it won’t be at the top of their feed.
It is essential to identify a target audience and buyer persona for your company to be successful.
A business in the restaurant industry would be wise to post on social media in the late afternoon on a Friday. This is because people are more likely to make weekend dinner plans in the evening.
A company that sells to businesses would not be as successful using this strategy, as its target audience would be finishing work for the weekend.
By Monday, the post from Friday will be forgotten, or it won’t have been seen at all.
5. Practice Proactive Engagement
To use proactive social media engagement strategies, you need to be the one to start the conversation. Most consumers want to be contacted by brands online, and social media provides many opportunities for daily engagement. Proactive engagement can include:
- Moderating branded groups with active forums
- Making and monitoring branded hashtags
- Creating social media stories with Instagram link stickers, filters, or polls
- Collaborating on Instagram Reels
- Hosting ‘Ask Me Anything’ (AMA) sessions
- Responding to indirect social mentions
- Crafting posts with open-ended questions
6. Respond to Followers
Both sides need input in a conversation for it to be successful, and social media interactions are no different! You can show your followers that you care about them and are interested in continuing the conversation by replying to incoming mentions, comments, and direct messages.
This will probably result in more mentions, comments, and direct messages. Within 24 hours of receiving feedback, make sure to address both positive and negative feedback.
Don’t be afraid to move the conversation to direct messages for a more responsive and personalized interaction.
7. Share Engaging Content
Posting unique and relevant content to social media is a great way to attract new followers and keep existing ones interested.
When creating content for your social media channels, aim for 80% of your social media posts to either educate, entertain, or help followers solve a problem, with the remaining 20% directly promoting your business. This will help you focus on creating content that your audience will like.
8. Craft Effective Posts
It can be helpful to know the anatomy of a social media post when sharing content on social media. No matter how interesting your content is, people won’t read it if your headlines don’t make them want to.
A majority of people only read the headlines of posts, so having good headlines can be a deciding factor for engagement.
If you want your audience to take further action with your social media post, you’ll need strong calls-to-action. Some examples of a call-to-action would be clicking through to your website or signing up for a giveaway.
9. Use Hashtags Strategically
If you use hashtags on your social media content, it will be easier for people who are interested in that topic to find your channels.
You can join conversations that are already happening and become more visible to people who don’t already follow you on some platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram by following hashtags.
It may be beneficial to use a combination of popular and branded hashtags in order to increase your audience, gain more followers, and improve social media engagement with your content.
10. Incorporate Visual Assets
You only have a few seconds to capture your audience’s attention on social media before they move on to the next post.
If you want your posts to stand out in the feed and get more engagement from your followers, then you should use visual assets like videos, photos, and infographics.
In other words, tweets with videos are much more likely to be noticed and interacted with than tweets without videos, while Facebook posts with images are slightly more likely to be noticed and interacted with than Facebook posts without images. See if you can find ways to add more visual posts to your social media content calendar.
11. Follow a Post Schedule
The frequency and timing of your social media posts have an effect on the level of engagement you observe. The posting schedule for social media should be based on when the target audience is most active online, as well as which platform they are using.
There is an ideal frequency for posting on social media platforms. How often you should post on each social media platform: -Instagram: 3-7 times per week -Facebook: 1-2 times per day -Twitter: 1-5 times per day
Even though you should be adjusting your follower’s online activity, you should still be tracking your audience metrics.
12. Cross-Promote Content
One way to expand your social media engagement is to partner with another content creator. When you cross-promote on social media, you’re essentially borrowing another channel’s audience to help grow your own.
To expand your company’s reach is to partner with another company that has a similar target audience. You could also collaborate with influencers to gain new followers and increase engagement.
13. Be Authentic
Almost all customers say that they prefer companies that are authentic, so one of the best ways to improve social media engagement is to be more genuine.
Finding a social media marketing voice that embodies your brand is essential to connecting with your audience online. Consistency is key when it comes to maintaining your brand’s voice across all social media platforms. Funny content is usually more popular with users, so using humor could help you get more shares, comments, or likes.
Another tactic you could use is to be honest. Being honest with your audience by admitting your mistakes and sharing your company values can help to build trust and keep them interested in your brand.
14. Run Social Media Contests
If you want to get people talking and interacting, host a social media contest or giveaway. Promotions that involve giving away freebies are effective in generating excitement and interest, as well as reaching a wider audience through social media. Furthermore, these giveaways can result in new leads and increased sales for businesses.
Contests held on social media platforms should offer attractive prizes that will motivate users to interact with the content by following, liking, sharing, commenting, or tagging.
An example of something you could do would be to run an Instagram contest where people who want to enter have to follow your main account and get a friend to do the same. If they do this, then they are eligible for prizes.
You can find the best time for you to post on your social media accounts by looking at the audience analytics. This tool will allow you to see when your followers are the most active so that you can post at those times.
There have been studies conducted to determine the best time to post content online in general, taking into account the variability of different audiences. You might need to experiment to figure out what time of day works best for you.
