Many people struggle with social media engagement. I have had lots of people come to me for this reason, so I thought to give you tips to improve engagement on social media.
Here’s the thing: social media is one of the biggest drivers for brand development and sales for many companies. If done correctly, you will see an increase in brand recognition and conversions.
However, this doesn’t happen overnight as it will take some time to fully have that social media engagement every brand craves, which will, in turn, catalyze bigger sales.
What Is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement measures public sharing, likes, and comments on a business or individual’s social media efforts. In as much as you want to have a large audience, the hallmark of any social media success is an engaged audience.
Enough chit-chat, let’s show you 40 creative and proven ways to increase your social media engagement.
1. Analyze the Engagement on Your Social Media Posts
The first step on this long and continuous journey to improving your social media engagement is to analyze your current engagement data. It’ll be hard to calculate your progress when you don’t know where you stand.
So, take notes on the type of content that gets more positive comments, likes, profile checks, link clicks, etc. Those are the kind of posts that resonate with your audience. Focus on them more.
Also, most social media platforms provide analytics and insights. Leverage them
Make sure you keep regularly monitoring so that you catch jumps or dips in interaction that can give you helpful hints about what works or, just as importantly, what doesn’t work.
2. Start and Join Facebook Groups
Facebook groups are a great way to improve social media engagement. However, it doesn’t work for every kind of business. Communities are great, don’t get me wrong, but if your audience doesn’t like Facebook, you will be wasting your time there.
If there’s no indication that they hate Facebook groups, try it out. Groups are usually more interactive than pages because it has more of a community feel. Be involved in such groups and always focus on delivering the best user experience.
You don’t have to start one. You can join one. Look for groups in your niche or groups where your target audience would be in and join.
In such groups, don’t sell unless they directly ask you for a solution. Instead, provide quality answers and suggestions to discussions and let them see that you are a thought leader.
3. Use Images in Your Tweets
According to Buffer, tweets that contain photos tend to get 150% more retweets and general engagement than posts that don’t include them.
Photos attract more focus than just plain text while scrolling through news feeds. Adding related images to your post will help facilitate more interaction with social media.
4. Keep Your Response Time Fast
Nobody likes being ignored or put on hold, so do all you can to reply to messages, comments, and mentions as quickly as possible. Failure to do this could pose a significant roadblock to improving your social media engagement.
You can pre-compose answers to popular queries and save them somewhere, so you don’t have to type them every time
5. Publish More Video Content
I know this is not easy. I am still struggling with it. But I have noticed for clients, my brands, and students who have used video to have positive results.
If you are on Instagram, you would know already that video content, especially in Reels, improves engagement and reach right now. Invest in them. Other platforms are not left out. Video ads on Facebook do better than image ads. Videos on Twitter do well as well.
Videos offer a refreshing switch to your usual content when you share photos regularly. They can speak to a different set of audiences who prefer watching videos to viewing pictures. In essence, it’s a win-win for everybody.
6. Go Live on Facebook and Instagram
Go live. With this feature on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, businesses and brands have a new tool to quickly improve social media engagement.
You can make the most of these opportunities to engage fans on a real-time basis. You can do that by streaming your launch event, an anniversary, award ceremony, end of the year activities, and the likes; you’d be surprised by the engagement you’ll receive.
However, one key thing to note to make this work is to remind your audience before you go live, let them know about the event months before it happens, and don’t be tired to remind them regularly.
7. Be Humorous
Not a lot of brands know this, but people use social media first to be entertained. Many people want to see something funny and share a laugh or two; it’s not all about selling all the time.
Instead, regularly use memes and clever puns in your posts to entertain your followers and improve interaction with your audience.
If you can afford it, jump on it. Reach out to influencers that have an engaged following. Not just someone with thousands or millions of followers, but someone whose followers interact with them in the comments.
Also, use influencers that align with your brand culture. For example, you can’t advertise your vegan products through someone that consistently talks about their love for meat and how much they eat it.
9. Organize Giveaways
Doing challenges and giveaways is one of the best ways you can boost social media interaction. It could be a video contest where you ask people to do a trending dance while showcasing one of your products or a photo contest, as the case may be.
Just be creative and have fun. You can as well tell the winner to post an appreciation video showing he/she has received the prize as a way to show that you’re legitimate.
Consider your audience before planning any giveaway so that you design one that they are interested in.
10. Follow Active People in Your Industry and Engage with Their Audience
In every industry, certain people are well known and have massive engagement. Following them can go a long way to helping you scale up your engagement.
Not just following them, but engaging with their audience. Discuss in the comments.
11. Organize Surveys and Polls
This is one significant way to engage with your audience and prospective clients as you can ask questions, and you’ll be sure of getting the desired feedback.
Sharing responses and reviews from your customers can go a long way to help improve your social media engagement as it will show that you are concerned with customer satisfaction, thus allowing you to gain more audience.
13. Participate in Twitter Chats
This is when users come together to discuss topics that are important to them. It helps you build a connection with other people in the chat.
14. Always Ask for Feedback
Having a regular presence on social media doesn’t always mean the desired feedback will be there. Therefore, always ask for feedback from your audience as it will show that you care about their opinions and inputs, thereby increasing your engagement.
15. Use Animated Gifs
Animated Gifs are a proven way to attract attention on social media. They are usually humorous and appeal to that fun perspective every social media user wants. So, they’re sure to improve your social media engagement.
16. Promote Other People’s Content.
Remember that improving your social media engagement is the number one goal; you could find time to curate and share other people’s content on your page. When they see this, they’re more likely to return the favor and share your content too.
When reposting, ensure that they know about it. For example, use apps like Regram on Instagram. With that, they will see your repost and possibly share that on their Instagram Story.
17. Post About Causes That Matter to Your Target Audience
You are dealing with people, and you will be perceived as noisy and salesy if all you post are your products. Also, post what’s good for society, like a charity event, environment, causes that affect your target audience, etc., to show that you care about the customers and not just their money.
18. Respond to Mentions and Comments
You know that ugly feeling you get when someone receives your message but fails to respond. It’s not a feel-good kinda thing. If you ignore comments and mentions, people wouldn’t want to comment anymore, except if you are a big celebrity.
Try to respond to mentions and comments to prevent that from happening – as you could start losing your audience when they feel you’re not engaging them.
Hashtags are a great and effective way to reach a wider audience when used right. Always stick to hashtags that have a connection to your business. Don’t just fill your post with unrelated hashtags, as it can be misleading.
20. Organize AMA’s (Ask Me Anything)
Your engagement will improve if you had a session where your audience could ask you anything, and you’ll provide them with answers? Yes, you would, which is why you should do just that. AMA’s can help you connect with your audience and build a loyal fan base.
21. Promote User Generated Content
When your audience gives good reviews about you, share them on your page. When they post something meaningful, post it. This will, in turn, will create a ripple effect as other people will begin to talk about it, and the person or business you reposted will want to engage with you more, thereby improving your engagement.
22. Be Specific When Asking Questions
The best way to get people talking on social media is to ask simple questions. It’s not that hard as the audience will get your message, and you’ll receive the engagement. You would be greatly shocked at the amount of reaction you are going to get.
24. Respond to Questions and Customer Issues
I cannot begin to tell you how many times I’ve seen big brands and businesses lose audience because they failed to respond to a few customer issues. Customers will always share their pain. They will share their pain before they share the positive. Respond to issues and questions fast.
25. Mention Your Followers in Your Post
Many brands have what we call super fans, and mentioning them from time to time shows that you see and recognize them. It means you acknowledge their following and appreciate them. This will want them to engage you more.
Your superfans are those that are always there in the engagements—the constant like and comments. Mention them when you post something that they can contribute to.
26. Link Content to Recent Events
It is always a good bet to connect your content with the current events ranging from elections, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. You can use this to gain more engagement as, more often than not, your audience will connect better to your content because it is related to current events.
27. Initiate the Conversation
Instead of waiting for your audience to do all the talking, you could start the conversation yourself. Doing this will require your audience to engage you immediately. Ask for opinions. Get on the comments of other people and start conversing. Get them to check your profile but don’t act like a bot.
28. Use Emojis
Most people love emojis! They’re fun and can say a lot without using a lot of words. Using the right set of emojis in your posts can be an excellent strategy to improve engagement.
29. Find the Best Time to Post and Post at That Time
Your audience would engage on various social media platforms at different times. You need to find what that time is. Don’t rely on social media statistics in articles online. They might help, but not so much. You know your audience better.
You should have done target customer research to know the social media platform that your audience uses more. If you didn’t, our social media marketing course will help you.
As you post, watch the statistics/insights. They will tell you all you need to know. For example, Instagram’s statistics can tell you the best day and hour.
There’s nothing terrible or hard in asking for retweets or shares on a post, as people are more likely to retweet or share when you ask for it.
31. Link Your Social Media Accounts
Although various social media platforms exist, it is the same people in them most of the time. They just interact differently. On some platforms, they don’t want to interact with brands, but if you have done your research well, you’d be fine.
Link to your other social media platforms in your posts. If you just newly joined Clubhouse, let people know you are there. If you just posted an interesting thing elsewhere, let them know.
This works for cross-promoting. For example, if you have good engagements on Instagram but low engagements on Facebook, you can promote Facebook on Instagram.
Linking your profiles allows followers on other social networks to notice you quickly and continue to connect with you there.
32. Partner with Popular Brands
Identify the top brands in your industry and partner with them. That will enable you to tap into their large audience. They then promote you on their profiles, which will help you get a better engagement.
This is one of the hardest tips, if not the hardest tip on this list, to implement and might be impossible because partnering with a brand is not only about social media engagement but the overall brand image, growth, and marketing.
33. Employ Social Media Managers
Social media can be a lot to handle alone. Many entrepreneurs do it and struggle. A social media marketing course can help, but if you realize you don’t have the time or extra creative ideas or juice to invest, hire an expert.
You can either go with a freelancer or an agency.
34. Take A Social Media Marketing Course
If you are a social media marketer but find yourself struggling with what to post and how to interact on social media, a training to boost what you have is necessary. Sign up for a social media marketing course at Market Ardent at only ₦36,000.00.
35. Use Eye-Catching Captions
This is one sure way to grab your audience’s attention and improve your engagement, as the perfect caption could just do all the work.
Bear in mind that some platforms cut off your captions after the first line with “more” for people to read the rest. So, write short captions. If you need to write long ones, ensure that you use words on the first line to make them want to read the rest.
36. Engage with Your Target Audience on Their Pages
You’re not going to master how to navigate various platforms, what your audience likes, and the peculiarities that these various platforms have if you don’t spend time on them.
Engage with your target audience on their profiles—comment like a human and not a company.
Many social media marketers make the mistake of sounding so professional in their chats. People don’t come on social media to see that. If they wanted to read that tone, they would be on your press release.
37. Invest in Social Media Advertising
You can’t get engagements from crickets. You need people to engage with. Social media advertising can help you to build that awareness. Not only will it help you grab an audience, but it can also help you sell your products/services.
FAQs
In this section, I’ll be answering some of the questions I have received in the past. Now, I have covered most of them above, but let’s look at them for the sake of preciseness.
How Can Social Media Engagement Be Increased Organically?
There are several proven and effective strategies that you can use to grow your social media engagement organically. A majority of the tips to improve social media engagement that I provided above will do it.
Here are some highlights:
- Schedule posts for publication at the right time
- Respond to mentions
- Host giveaway contests
- Come up with some attractive visuals
- Increase engagement and reach with influencer marketing
How Is Social Media Engagement Measured?
There are various metrics with which to measure media engagement, and they include
- Shares or retweets
- How often your profile is viewed
- Likes
- Comments
- Followers and audience growth (not necessarily, but could help)
- Click-throughs
- Mentions (either tagged or untagged)
Why Is Social Media Engagement Important?
Businesses today are social media-driven, and without engagement, you can’t drive conversions and sales. A dedicated audience is one who knows, likes, and trusts your brand. It can help fuel the sale of your products or services. Social media engagement can help you strengthen your customer relationship as well as build customer loyalty.
Still Asking How to Increase Social Media Engagement?
I have provided a lot of tips already. To ramp up your engagement in social media, you’re going to need to break down the process into separate parts.
First, understand what engagement is and what parts you want to focus on. Second, look at the current engagement you have, and thirdly, decide which short-term and long-term strategies you want to use to increase engagement because there are many strategies to choose from.
So, do your research and choose those you know you can do better than others and have fun with them.
There is no highest level of engagement that you can achieve. Even if you have a lot, you can always increase your social media engagement. The more engaged your audience, the more your posts will be viewed by other people and the faster you will accomplish those social media goals.
Let me know what you think.
