Without engagement, social media is just media.
Pretty much all brands leverage social media to promote their products and services. Yet, many underestimate the value of engagement.
Having a high engagement gives you increased credibility amongst your social circle.
Social media engagement has become a vital part of any marketing strategy. It shows that you post high-quality content that resonates with your followers. This leads to more loyal customers and thus higher sales.
Now you know WHY you should care about your social media engagement. So, let’s dig deeper and learn HOW to boost your social media engagement to win lifelong fans.
In this article you’ll learn:
- What social media engagement is
- Tactics for improving your engagement strategy
- How to further boost engagement and reach new audiences – fast!
What is social media engagement?
Social media engagement is a measure of how people interact with your social media content.
Social media engagement covers a broad range of actions across all social platforms. For example, engagement might include likes, comments, mentions, and shares.
How to boost your social media engagement
1. Audit your current engagement
First thing first. It’s hard to measure your growth if you don’t know where you’re starting from.
By reviewing your current metrics, you’ll be able to determine whether you’re achieving your goals or if there’s room for improvement. Write down your current reach, comments, impressions, or other numbers that are important to you. Native analytics are available for each social media platform when you have a business account.
Continue reviewing your engagement metrics monthly, or even weekly, to effectively identify what’s working and where improvement is needed.
2. Know your audience
Don’t expect people to engage with your content if you don’t know who they are or what their interests are.
Knowing your audience will help you determine:
- Brand voice
- What social media platform to choose
- Type of content (e.g. video, photos, infographics, sharing articles, etc,.)
- When to publish
When you compile data on your existing audience, consider the following demographics:
- Location (and timezone): Where do they live? This also tells when to schedule posts and target social ads.
- Gender
- Stage of life: Does your audience include new moms, students, or retirees?
- Interests: What other brands or businesses do they interact with?
- Behavior: buyer patterns, and spending
Google Analytics is great for obtaining demographic details about your audience, as well as their interests and behavior. You can see insights broken down into different sections that are easy to interpret, like age, gender and location.
3. Share valuable content
Now that you know who your audience is, it’s time to plan content that is truly valuable to them. What do you want to tell them and how do you meet their needs?
Here are a few examples of content ideas you can get creative with:
- Contests
- Memes
- Infographics
- Polls
- Encouraging your audience to ask you questions (try an “Ask Me Anything” session)
- Test their knowledge
- Highlight customers
- User-generated content
It’s important to know what kind of content performs better on each platform. In general, eye-catching images or videos work well for Instagram. And long text posts work for Facebook and LinkedIn. But don’t hold back on your creativity. Trying different formats and assets is how you learn what works for your target audience.
4. Use trending hashtag sets
Hashtags are a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#), used on social media to identify digital content on a specific topic. Hashtags are one of the few organic strategies businesses have left to increase their reach and engagement.
While using relevant hashtags are important, using them the right way is essential.
To find hashtags that are specific to your industry and audience, you’ll have to do a little research.
There are many hashtag generator tools that can help you out. We like the Hastagify tool where you can find trending hashtags in different niches. This tool offers insights and analytics to help you generate smart hashtag sets in a few minutes.
5. Engage, Engage, Engage
To be social and engage with your users is key to maintaining loyal followers. You wouldn’t go to a social event, hold a speech and then not interact with your listeners, would you?
The fact is, the more people engage with your content, the more the algorithm is going to promote your account.
6. Post at the right time
This should come as a chock. Posting at the right time can increase likes, comments, shares, and interaction. It’s best to learn what times are best to post to each social network.
According to Sprout, the best times to post are:
Facebook: Wednesday, 11 a.m. and 1–2 p.m.
Instagram: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday from 10 a.m.–11 a.m.
Twitter: Wednesday and Friday at 9 a.m.
Linkedin: Wednesday from 8–10 a.m. and noon, Thursday at 9 a.m. and 1–2 p.m., and Friday at 9 a.m.
Boost your content to reach a new, targeted audience – fast!
What we’ve shared so far, are tactics you can include in your strategy to increase social media engagement organically. While this can help your followers getting chatty, social media advertising is a must if you want rapid growth and reaching new, targeted audiences.
There are various types of social media ads that can help achieve real business results.
To increase visibility and engagement, offering helpful information or a discount to entice users to your page can be very effective. And of course, maintaining your page with awesome and valuable content. That way, your paid ads will prove their ROI while becoming an automatic win-win for your business and audience.
Do you have any questions about executing some of these tactics? Feel free to ask them in the comments below.
If you’re interested in how we can help you create and boost campaigns to grow your business, feel free to contact us.
