In the past, you only needed followers, and they would be shown every post you created, leading to a higher engagement level. However, in the recent past, social media algorithms have changed how they show content to users.
Sites like Facebook and Instagram will show more of your posts to those who like, comment, and share your posts. Therefore, if you want to increase the visibility of your posts, you should aim to increase your engagement level.
Why Social Media Engagement is Important
Social media engagement measures how people react to your post in the form of likes, comments, shares, retweets, saves, mentions, DMs, and replies.
Here are a few benefits of why engagement matters.
- Building relationships. When people comment on your posts, building engagement with them and fostering relationships is possible.
- Customer loyalty. The more customers engage with your brand, the more it sticks to their minds. If you can respond to their queries fast, you can easily make them loyal to your brand.
- Increased followers. Social media algorithms nowadays recommend to users pages with higher engagement. Therefore, when you have a higher engagement, your posts will reach people not following you.
How to Increase Engagement on Your Social Media Posts
We now understand why social media engagement matters. The next question we often receive is: How can I increase the engagement level of my social account? First, we need to mention that there is no magic bullet. It’s also not rocket science. With a few tips, you can see your engagement level grow tremendously. Here are the top tips for increasing social media engagement.
Create High-Quality Posts
The quality of posts is the number one factor that affects engagement level. This means you should create high-quality, relevant, and unique content your followers can engage with. When creating social media posts, ensure that 80% of your posts are educational while the other 20% can be promotional. This is important as making lots of ads is one of the ways of boring your social media users.
Other tips for making quality social media posts are:
- Understand your target audience
- Use catchy headlines
- Include a call to action
Use High-Quality And Captivating Visuals
When a social media user is scrolling down their timelines, you only have about 3 seconds to grab their attention. Visual assets such as images, videos, and memes can catch people’s attention better than acres of text. Ensure that your videos are accompanied by unique and captivating thumbnails.
Grow Your Following
Social media engagement and following are like the case of the chick and the egg; each of these will lead to the growth of the other. By default, the first people on social media sites will show your posts to your followers. And the fact that these people are already following you means they are interested in your content. Therefore, by growing your following, you will see an increase in engagement.
By now, I know you are wondering how to grow your number of followers. Here are a few tips:
- Create high-quality content that resonates with your audience
- Include high-quality SEO captions on your posts
- Use the best hashtags
- Have a consistent posting schedule
- Post at the right time
- Cross-promote your social media pages
- Create a social media marketing plan.
Stay Authentic
Studies indicate that customers love engaging with authentic brands. When you consistently deliver quality to your followers, you can build a feeling of authenticity that can breed loyalty. One way of staying authentic is having a social media brand voice that reflects and maintains your brand.
Humorous posts are also popular on social media; you can use them if they align with your brand’s voice. This can increase the number of shares, comments, and likes.
Proactively use hashtags
Hashtags enable social media users to find your channel and content. People can follow an ongoing conversation by using hashtags on Instagram and Linkedin. This can help increase your brand’s visibility. When creating a hashtag, you can combine brand hashtags with popular hashtags.
With competition among brands heating up on social media, you don’t have to sit back and wait for your followers to engage with your posts. Look for ways to engage with your audience proactive
- Asking them questions
- Creating a social media challenge for your brand
- Running content and inviting your followers to participate in it
- Making branded hashtags
- Hosting an Ask Me Anything session
- Responding to direct mentions on social media
Final Thoughts
A higher social media engagement level indicates the level of trust that customers have in your brand. This gives you a better opportunity to increase brand loyalty and conversion. By following the above tips, you can easily increase engagement on social media.
