Nowadays, social media has become the most effective form of marketing. We can access social media from anywhere around the world. It is a fun and engaging way to share information.
Moreover, its popularity has created a challenge for business owners to stand out from the crowd. According to the reports from CoSchedule, 97 percent of marketers are using social media platforms as a competitive marketing tool to promote their business in the market.
However, some marketers still underestimate the value of organic engagement. When you market your business on social media, your sole purpose should always be to increase social media engagement. But, how can you increase social media engagement?
In this blog, we are going to discuss effective ways to increase engagement on social media.
Why Is Social Media Engagement Important?
Although you can use social media completely for free, you usually invest time and effort in creating content, growing the list of followers, and engaging with them. But what if you get ignored by the crowd or end up talking to an empty room?
To avoid such scenarios, you should create an accurate social media strategy that gives reasons to your audience to engage with you. This way, you will enjoy the benefits of:
- Building Greater Brand Awareness- Always remember that to get engagement, you do not have to be extensively famous. You only need a strategy that is targeted to the right audience.
- Increasing Your Reach- Someone engaging with your social media posts can help the algorithms determine your post more relevant and fascinating. As a result, your content tends to get pushed into more people’s feeds.
- Acquiring More Accurate Data- Although you know who your audience is, the metrics you obtain from engagement provide you with relevant information concerning their story. They even offer you ideas to better connect with them.
- Increasing Your Clout- Your conversational style of social media marketing will allow you to increase the reach of the brand’s voice and thoughts.
- Providing Better Customer Service- You are not handling the technical support on social media. But, when you answer the questions of interested prospects and customers, it provides you the opportunity to showcase to them how much they matter to you.
- Developing Meaningful Relationship- Social media is a conversation that enables you to engage with different people, thereby generating meaningful interactions.
Ways To Increase Social Media Engagement
You are trying your best in creating content, but are not satisfied with the engagement you are getting on social media. This is what a lot of organizations are facing today.
However, by following the points given below, you can improve engagement on social media effortlessly.
Scrutinize Your Latest Engagement
You can acquire social media analytics from two different places. You can log on to your social media platforms and use the analytics provided by them. Every social media offers statistics for every individual post based on the types of engagements available. It also provides you an average performance report concerning the rates of engagement, link clicks, likes, and comments.
On the contrary, you can acquire analytical information via social media management and scheduling tools as it collects all the data concerning your social media accounts in one place.
Using this information, you can compare the engagement rates with that of your competitors and create marketing strategies accordingly.
Make an Appropriate Engagement Strategy
Are you still trying to define and finalize your social media engagement goals? Don’t worry! You are not alone.
To increase content engagement, you need to break down the process into different parts. The first part should be a clear understanding of the engagement and the part that requires the prime focus. Then, you need to analyze the social media engagement you currently have. Lastly, it is time to pick out both long-term and short-term strategies you want to utilize for increasing engagement.
Moreover, use the SMART goal-setting framework, whose full form is:
- Specific- Keep your goal transparent, straightforward, and more defined.
- Measurable- Use social media analytics to measure the metrics.
- Achievable- Question yourself whether the goal you have set is achievable or not.
- Realistic- Look whether it is possible to achieve the goal with the resources available.
- TIme-Sensitive- Set a time frame to achieve the goal. It can either be several months or a year.
This way, you and your team will be able to focus social media marketing efforts and achieve maximum engagement.
Create Original And Engaging Visuals
Wishpond claims that the average Facebook posts tend to acquire 120 percent less engagement than the posts that include images in them. Hence, it is essential to post visuals in the form of images, memes, GIFs, or original graphics to boost organic engagement. You can use Canva to create highly engaging and original visuals in different shapes, photos, text, color, and much more.
You can also promote your latest research findings or posts that include interesting facts using infographics. The link to these infographics can then be shared on your social media accounts and in your blog.
Analyze Your Social Media Audience
When you do not know with whom you are talking, engagement becomes difficult. The language, tone, and resources differ from company to company. When you are aware of your audience, you will be able to determine the social media sites you will be on, the accurate time to publish the product, the type of content you should publish, and your brand voice.
Post More Video Content
Images and visuals are considered an excellent way to improve engagement on social media like Twitter and Facebook. Assuming you are already engaging people on visual social media platforms like Instagram, the question is, “What needs to be done, to increase social media engagement on this platform too?” The primary focus will be creating and promoting more videos, especially on Instagram stories. Since you are posting images regularly, videos will bring a change in your usual content.
Although you are posting videos, you need to ensure that the posts remain unique on the social media platforms. To achieve this, you will have to use appropriate keywords, titles, descriptions, and tags. This way, your videos will rank better as well as get discovered faster when searched on these platforms.
Use Trendy Hashtags
Hashtags can significantly increase social media engagement based on the way we use them. Though your posts are reaching your existing followers, hashtags help you engage with those people who are not even your followers. Using relevant and trendy hashtags on platforms like Instagram and Twitter helps you gain more followers.
You can use tools to find hashtags that are not only trendy but also fit perfectly well with your niche. Furthermore, you can even start your hashtag trend. All you need to do is engage your customers to create posts using the unique and branded hashtag you have just created.
But why will they post something using your hashtag?
That is why you can offer them something in exchange, like getting featured in your social media post or the chance to win some exciting gifts. After all, your sole purpose should be to get the hashtag on the trend to reach those users who are not in your followers’ base.
Keep The Conversation Flowing
Keeping your audience engaged in the conversation is not art. Instead, it is a sport that includes driving attention and questions alternatively. It is also vital for your brand to practice both reactive and proactive engagement. While being reactive means answering direct messages, incoming mentions, and comments, proactive involves you starting a conversation with people who might be talking about you but haven’t sent you any messages.
Run Contests And Giveaways
Another way to increase content engagement is by running contests and giveaways. This technique is considered essential in driving engagement just because people have the chance of receiving something. It creates an urge among your audience for engaging with the brand or influencer content on social media.
You will also increase the amount of user-generated content for your brand depending on the way you are executing the contest.
Ask your followers to like your posts and tag their friends in the comments to make them participate in the contest. This idea of running contests and giveaways will help you to analyze social media engagement too.
Take Advantage Of Current Events and Trends
Always track the events or trends going on in your business’s surrounding area. They are considered a great conversation starter on social media platforms. It is more effective when it even leaves a significant impact on your target audience.
It is because when you connect with the latest events and trends, you tend to obtain the opportunity to instantly connect with the audience in a timely way.
Promote Attractive Offers
Sometimes, you just have to use techniques that have already been tried and tested for engaging customers and prospects. By this, we mean promoting discounts, coupons, special services, freebies, free shipping, and more. These offers are the best way to increase engagement and sales simultaneously. Ensure to experiment with different types of offers and promotions to see what your audience responds to best.
Key Takeaway
If you focus on growing your social media engagement, you will be able to enjoy the benefit of better marketing reach, ROI, and higher brand awareness, thereby reaching prospects and customers easily. Social media is always going to be an ongoing conversation, and if you are a good speaker, you will be able to excite more audiences to reach out to your brand.
