Engaging your audience might be a foreign concept if you are not fully immersed in the social media world. If this is the case, don’t stress. This blog will unpack everything you need to know about social media engagement.
Let’s start by looking into what social media engagement refers to. Social media engagement is the measurement of comments, likes, shares, and saves. An engaged audience is an invested, dedicated, loyal audience. The goal is to have an audience that is your personal cheer squad – people who will act as brand ambassadors and create buzz around your brand purely because they love it.
Gaining high levels of engagement takes time. It is not an overnight thing and if you are tempted by purchasing likes, think of it as money down the drain. So, be patient, put in the hard work and watch your engagement levels rise.
Why seek engagement?
Engagement is crucial for strengthening your brand in the online space. Not only does engagement help your business grow, but it welcomes a lively community.
Realistically, your audience can make or break your brand. Let’s paint a picture: you want to buy a new coat. You find two brands online but want to check out their social pages before you purchase. Brand A has no reviews, hasn’t posted in 3 weeks, and doesn’t have any comments on the latest post. Brand B has hundreds of reviews, daily posts, a few stories up, posts flooded with comments and lots of tagged content. Which brand would you choose?
Engagement can represent the success of a brand and its willingness to grow.
In relation to the algorithm and success of your content, if your post is gaining hundreds of likes and comments, it’ll be naturally boosted up the user’s feed. It may even appear on the Instagram explore page or the TikTok ‘for you’ page.
As engagement grows, so too does your brand reputation and awareness. You may have been scrolling through your Facebook feed, and you can see a friend of yours has commented on a brand’s posts, making you aware of the brand. If your friend didn’t engage with the post, you mightn’t’ve seen it. This illustrates the importance and impact of engagement.
How do I get more engagement?
First things first, record your current stats to create a base level, so you have growth to measure.
Learn about your current audience
Spend time getting to know your current audience. Things to look into include the peak times for your audience and which of your current posts and stories had the most engagement. Don’t be afraid to ask your audience what they want to see. Pop a question box or poll on your story to welcome feedback, suggestions, and ideas.
Ask for engagement
Engagement is as simple as likes and comments, so ask for them (discreetly, of course!) A call to action is a great way to encourage natural engagement. For example, “comment below if you agree!” or “Like this post if you’re excited for the weekend” is a simple yet effective approach. Another way to increase engagement on Instagram, in particular, is to optimise your stories. Add polls, slider reacts and question boxes to your stories as much as possible. They count as engagement, so make the most of them
Be consistent
Consistency is key! If your engagement is on the rise, keep the ball rolling by uploading frequently. Engagement, like many other social media metrics, fluctuates. However, to constantly improve, keep your audience engaged.
Posting consistently is made easy with sites such as Later and Content Cal. You can schedule content to go out automatically, so there are no excuses! Read our blog on social media tools to learn more about these sites.
Stay up to date with what is trending to allow for natural engagement. Whether this is trending audio, trending themes, or sharing content on a trending topic in the news world.
Engagement goes both ways
Engagement is not a one-way approach. Engaging with your audience encourages them to do the same back. This doesn’t mean stalking your followers, but rather showing your appreciation for your community. Liking comments, replying to comments, liking posts, and sending messages are all simple ways to show your audience you care. Appreciation allows for loyalty.
This can also be a great opportunity to reach out to businesses in your local area to support them, increasing the likelihood of them supporting back.
Incentives
Don’t shy away from rewarding engagement. Running competitions and giveaways can be a highly successful way to increase your engagement. Have you ever entered a giveaway, and the requirements include leaving a comment a liking a post? Yep, that’s to increase engagement! A small token of your appreciation can go a long way, so get creative and watch the engagement flow in.
What is my engagement like?
In recent years, larger platforms like Facebook and Instagram have made it easy for you to track your engagement. Meta Business Suite is a great place to explore if you want to learn more about your audience and track their engagement patterns. Instagram insights are readily available to anyone with a business account too. Simply press the insights tab on your profile to review your engagement levels. You can watch them grow month to month by referring to historical data.
My followers are going up, but my engagement rate is going down?
Don’t panic – this is meant to happen! Your engagement rate is calculated by your total engagements divided by your total followers multiplied by 100. That’s why Kim Kardashian has an engagement rate of 2.24% despite having 307 million followers.
Let’s recap! High engagement levels are not reached overnight but rather in a slow, upwards fashion, so don’t let the small increases get you down.
Engagement comes in many forms, so finding what makes your audience most likely to engage can do wonders for your success. Again, don’t be afraid to ask directly.
If you are feeling stuck, we are here to help! Book a social media health check with our team today.
