Information in this blog post was obtained from Social Media Today, Semrush, and Moz.com.
Our society has been able to connect over the recent years through the world of technology, especially through social media. Social media has become a strong tool for businesses, institutions, and individuals to gain an audience, as well as awareness. Being able to understand how to properly engage with your audience will help your success through your digital platforms.
What is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement is the measure of how your audiences are interacting with your content through your platforms. Engagement metrics include likes, comments, shares, followers, saves, click-throughs, and favorites.
All of your engagement numbers must support each other. You could have a million followers but low like counts and saves. This is why it is so important to know the best ways to utilize your social media accounts as a business or an influencer.
How to Increase Social Media Engagement
In this post, I will be going through five different tips to increase your engagement with your audience through your social media content.
1. Know your Audience
This is taking the number one spot because I believe knowing your audience is incredibly important, and many could argue that it is the most important way to increase engagement. To know your audience is to understand the demographics, preferences, interests, and needs. Knowing the type of people you are creating the content for. This can be something as simple as knowing the age of your audience, or something more complex knowing the challenges of the people and using that to show you understand.
You can get to know your audience by taking a deep dive into the information your social platform is giving you. Platforms such as Instagram and Facebook do give you certain information about the demographics of your followers. Also paying attention to what content performs the best on your pages, and what your audience is saying about it. What conversations are sparking in your comment section? Are they positive or negative? Knowing and understanding your audience is extremely important, you could have great social content but have the wrong audience. Find your audience first.
2. Compelling Content
Not every small business owner is going to be the most creative mind, but that doesn't mean that you can't have eye-catching content. With the use of our phones, we are all able to create high-quality, and with all the tools we have, we can be guided through content making. Whether you are telling a story to your audience, or posting an attention-grabbing infographic, it has never been easier to come up with compelling content to post on social media.
Canva is a great example of a tool that can help you push creative content to your social media platforms. There are many great templates you can use to up your game on the look of your social accounts.
Interactive content can also drive your engagement. This type of content encourages the participation of your followers, and in return gives you great feedback. These include polls and quizzes, which could be hinting at the launch of new products, or asking the public what they want to see next. Encourage them to like, comment, and share on your posts as well, and even them to tag a friend! Interactive content helps spark talk about your business, generate excitement with your followers, and of course increase engagement.
3. Reward Engagement
Rewarding engagement goes hand and hand with creating compelling, and interactive content for your social media platforms. Many of us have probably seen a business running a giveaway of their products, this is one of the best ways companies can get their followers involved and engaged. Through giveaways on a platform such as Instagram, there are certain tasks to do for your name to be entered in the giveaway. Typically, you must be following the brand’s account, like the post of the giveaway, comment, and maybe even share the post on your page. This helps increase their follower accounts, so more people may see their newest posts. With your comments and likes going up, it helps increase your overall engagement, so now your posts may be seen by more people even on the explore pages. And when people share the post to their account, it opens a whole new audience for your business. Typically, brands and businesses will run a giveaway when they hit milestones, for example hitting 100k followers, or when a new product just launched. These are both great ways to help show off your brand and give back at the same time to the people who love your brand.
Another way businesses reward engagement is when you subscribe with your name, phone number, and email to receive exclusive deals or the latest insight on what is new. Subscribing to the email list typically comes with a percent off on your first order. This is another way almost all businesses reward the engagement of their customers. Both examples can help grow your business. Rewarding engagement can be small stuff you do each week to keep your customers on their toes for what is next, by keeping them constantly interacting with your business.
4. Be Authentic
Creating good engaging content doesn't mean every piece of content you put out there has to be perfect. Being authentic is so important, for influencers and individual people, as well as brands and businesses. This can create a trusted relationship with your audience, which is so important when you are trying to build a loyal follower base.
Ways to show true authenticity through your social media can include being transparent and showing personality.
Share your mistakes and things that maybe didn't work out. In doing so you are being fully transparent with your follower base. Give them a full thorough process of your work. People like knowing that they are following real people, and not just business. This can also include showing the behind-the-scenes of what you are currently working on, the photoshoot process, and editing or creating.
Showing who you are as a business owner is the best way to showcase your personality, so people get to know the face behind the brand that they love. A great way many businesses do this is by going live on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, to interact with their followers in real-time. Lives are a great way to increase engagement.
5. Consistency
Being authentic, compelling, and interactive is great for your getting your engagement up, but it will only be short-term unless you stay consistent with posting. Being consistent with your social media posting can take your engagement to the next level. When customers see your content on the daily, they keep your business in the front of their minds. That is exactly what you want, to have your followers thinking about your business and wanting to see more from your brand. With that, your followers may also have a certain expectation for you to post consistently. Personally, it is hard for me to follow a business if they only post one maybe two times a week.
Lastly, when you are consistent with posting on your social media accounts, the algorithm plays in your favor. A great example of this algorithm can be shown through TikTok. In the TikTok app, they reward creators who have a regular posting schedule by putting the content on the “For You.” As many of us know, the “For You” page is where you see content of people you don’t follow. This is a great spot to post eye-catching content to attract new people to your brand and follow you. If you post once every few weeks, there is a good chance that your content will not reach your full audience, and no new people will see your content. Consistency with your post will also help with your loyalty to your audience and help create better brand awareness.
Consistency is the last piece of the puzzle to create a platform that has engaging content, that new and old followers will want to see. By creating an audience that you know how to engage, your business will be able to grow. Social media has given us all a great opportunity to grow not only ourselves on our personal accounts, but any business big or small, to have great amounts of success.
Conclusion
To thrive on social media platforms, learning how to engage an audience is essential for that success. By understanding your audience, and being able to create consistent, authentic, and compelling content, you should be able to see an increase in your engagement as well as more success with your platforms.
Resources
Sked Social. (2022, October 24). Retrieved from SocialMediaToday: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/spons/the-ultimate-guide-to-social-media-engagement/634618/
Branyik, K. (2022, May 11). Retrieved from Semrush:
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