Information for this blog post was obtained from Lingo, HubSpot, Sprout Social, and Wix.
Social media has become a major part of any successful marketing strategy today. Simply having a presence on social media and attracting an audience is not enough, to truly be successful you must engage your audience effectively. Today we will be exploring different strategies and tips to boost your audience engagement on social media. These skills and strategies will help you not only boost your social media engagement, but also build meaningful relationships and increase brand loyalty, and growth in the business.
What is Social Media Engagement?
Engagement on social media refers to the responses your social media posts receive (Nave 2021). Comments, likes, and shares are the most common types of engagement on social media, but depending on the platform there might be different engagement features. Pinterest allows users to save posts or add to their boards which is a different type of engagement for that platform, as well as X having the option to retweet a post!
The ultimate goal of social media marketing is to get meaningful engagement, which means that while you have a high amount of interactions and followers, your quality is what is more important (Nave 2021).
The Importance of Engagement
Social media is a free advertisement for your business. While you need to be posting and creating content for your followers and target audience, you need to make them want to interact with your posts so it is not a one-way conversation. You may still be asking why you need engagement on your posts, so here are a few benefits you will get:
Build greater brand awareness: you do not need millions of followers on your social media to get good engagement, you just need a great strategy aimed at the right audience, this is something that I will help you set up throughout the blog!
Increase your clout: Let your brand’s voice shine through the content that you put out. Putting out your brand's beliefs and morals allows people to connect with you.
Increase your reach: when your audience engages with your social media posts, the algorithm will help identify your posts as more relevant and interesting to that audience allowing your posts to be seen by them and audiences similar to them more often.
Develop a relationship: unlike traditional marketing when you post on social media you want to start a conversation with your audience. You need to give them a reason to want to engage with your posts, this is where you start building the relationship you want to have with your customers.
Better customer service: when you are posting content on your social media pages this gives a place for your customers to ask questions if they are unsure where to do so otherwise. Not only is social media a great place to answer questions, but you also get to see engagement from those who truly love your products. When they engage with your social media content you are getting even more free advertisement when they talk about how much they love your product!
Increase your data: not only will your data increase the more engagement you get on social media, but it will also be more accurate. The more engagement the more you will learn about things your customers like and the things they are not too fond of with your brand.
These are just a few of the amazing benefits you can get from creating engaging content on your social media!
Know Your Audience
After determining your engagement goals for your site, you need to start using data from your audience. (Boatman 2022). A great place to start your goals if you are unsure where to begin, think “What is bringing them back?”
When you start diving into understanding your target audience, conduct market research, analyze demographics, and gain insights into their interest and preferences. This will help you tailor your content to your specific target audience.
Demographics
You can group your audience based on characteristics that they share, such as marital status and age. These demographics will help influence people’s needs and pain points. An example provided by Sprout Social is that people have different needs based on the time of life they are in. New parents are going to have different needs than retired aged couples.
Location
Location is a very common segment to audiences based on where they are located. This is a range of whether people live in the city or the counts, but also looking at the different elements some may face if you are targeting that.
Interests
Different interests and hobbies can differentiate your audience. Knowing where your audience's interest lies can help you deliver meaningful messages that they can relate to. For example, you may create different content for an audience who likes cats versus an audience who likes dogs.
Knowing your audience can help you create content that is not only engaging, but that helps you relate your audience to your company.
Consistent and Quality Content
Consistency is key when it comes to engagement on social media. Develop a content strategy that aligns with your brand’s voice and values. Create high quality and relevant content that is specific for your audience. When planning your content make sure you are mixing up the forms of content, including posts, images, videos, stories, this will help keep your audience engaged and interested in your content.
According to HubSpot content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers (Riserbato 2021). Along with content creation comes the need for consistency, high quality, and engaging content that helps your audience in the decision-making process. Consistency is very important as it is one of many factors that can determine the success and growth that your business will have. The content that you are creating needs to be unique and identifiable across all channels that you are posting on. By posting consistently you are building your credibility, trust, and strengthening your reputation as a brand or company.
While we know it is critical to develop a good strategy when it comes to our content, let’s go over why marketers need to create a content marketing strategy to stay consistent with high-quality content. When you are wanting to stay consistent it is best to create a plan. This is a reliable and cost-effective way to help prepare your business to post engaging posts on social media (Forsey 2023). When starting to prepare you content calendar adjust your times to when your audience is active, this is something you would want to learn when learning about your target audience. If you do not have time references already create a plan where you alter the content times throughout the day for the first month so you can see when content is viewed the most to increase your audience per post.
Spark Conversations
By sparking conversations with your audience, you can encourage conversations and interactions on your social media platforms. Ask though provoking question, seek opinions, or give sneak peeks and hints on upcoming items. By creating this type of content, you are not only creating engaging content, but you are helping others seek a sense of community and making your audience feel valued. I will help you with some ideas to get your audience engaged on your social media!
Conduct a poll
This is a great way to engage your audience and help you learn more about them in general. This gives you the ability to have the answers tallied for you and you get to ask questions that will help you get the feedback you need. You also get the opportunity to get some content ideas based on the interactions that your audience has with your polls (Bretous 2022).
Repost user-generated content
If you are struggling to create unique content this is a great way to help! The audience does most of the work, but you get to repost it. The best way to successful help yourself in using this content is to create a unique hashtag relevant to your brand. Another option instead of creating your own hashtag is to find relevant hashtags that feature your brand. Once you have created or found relevant hashtags you are ready to repost the content!
Start a challenge
Social media challenges can take off like crazy. If you can create a viral challenge, it will greatly increase your visibility.
In 2022 Instagram added a feature to their Story features called “Add Yours” sicker, this allows users to add a Story connected to a specific theme (Bretous 2022). If you are marketing towards dog owners, you can “Add a picture of your dog.” This is a great way to engage your audience as they are eager to share!
There are so many ways for you to build your audience engagement on social media! The best way for you to build your engagement is to stay true to your brand and the audience that you are targeting.
If you are looking for more ways to build a strong connection with your audience, click here to visit my friend Ali’s blog about mastering brand loyalty, with tips and tricks for building a strong connection with your audience.
Resources
Boatman E. (2022, May 11) 12 Clever strategies to increase brand awareness in 2022. Lingo. April 8, 2024, https://www.lingoapp.com/blog/how-to-increase-brand-awareness?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwwr6wBhBcEiwAfMEQs_Y-OxxSgh5-Zz7RI0YCnS1JRb6qaqPWypMECvnpFRZgn3zwb0zarRoCTV8QAvD_BwE
Bretous M. (2022, September 20) 20+ fun and engaging Instagram story ideas for 2023. HubSpot. April 6, 2024, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/instagram-story-ideas
Forsey C. (2023, July 06) How to develop a content strategy in 7 steps; a start to finish guide. HubSpot. April 7, 2024, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/content-marketing-plan?hubs_content=blog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing%2Fbenefits-high-quality-content-consistency-brand&hubs_content-cta=content%20marketing%20strategy
Nave L. (2021, June 1) 10 tips on how to increase social media engagement. Wix. April 8, 2024, https://www.wix.com/blog/social-media-engagement?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=12188669214^114296906861^search%20-%20dsa&experiment_id=^^497047742394^&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwq86wBhDiARIsAJhuphnjGQ1NubwiTwXHL7vZL5O6m0ZN7No6MtvrBZeaKvIUdjlwnnCtsZEaAhu9EALw_wcB
Riserbato R. (2021, October 27) 10 benefits of consistent, high-quality content marketing. HubSpot. April 7, 2024, https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/benefits-high-quality-content-consistency-brand
Zote J. (2023, December 7) Social media target audience: How to find and engage yours. HubSpot. April 6, 2024, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-target-audience/
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