Posted by Did you know the user base for social media has increased from 970 million in 2010 to the number passing 4.48 billion users in July 2021?
And with an increase in user base, chances for your brand to engage with the right customers also increase. But so does for your competitors!
With social media continuing to dominate the marketing scene, especially post-pandemic, it’s easy to see why many businesses are ditching their more traditional strategies in favor of this new dynamic. While social media marketing is incredibly effective, businesses still struggle to reach and engage with their audiences effectively because they lack comprehensive data behind their user’s engagement patterns and a structured content plan based on this data.
LinkedIn, Twitter, Clubhouse, Facebook Live, Snapchat, and Instagram all offer exciting ways to reach potential customers. Still, there’s so much more you can do with these platforms and social media tools to boost your social media engagement.
Just posting is not enough, knowing:
- When,
- What,
- Where,
- And content type
is equally important.
Are you looking to take your social media game to the next level? Here are 8 tips to boost your social media game.
But before that, let us define social media engagement to keep us on the same page.
What is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement is a broad term. And under its umbrella covers a lot of metrics and actions performed by the users, for example:
- Like,
- Reaction,
- Share,
- Save,
- Click, etc.
It all depends on the social media platform or social media analytics software you are using. For example, if you are using LinkedIn, to check content engagement, you should go to update analytics, there you can check engagement in the form of the following metrics:
- Impressions
- Unique Impressions
- Clicks
- Reactions
- Comments
- Shares
- And overall Engagement rate
But to properly define the term, here goes:
“Social media engagement is the measure or data showcasing the number of people and their engagement behavior with your profile and content.”
And engagement rate is defined as the total number of interactions divided by your total number of followers multiplied by 100%.
Now that we know what you mean by social media engagement let us get back to giving you 8 powerful tips to increase your engagement.
How to increase social media engagement?
Before you go start adding these tips to your content calendar, analyze your current engagement and audience(create user personas for easy targeting), set goals, and define the metrics you want to track.
1. Being Consistent is the key.
The easiest way to increase engagement on social media is by upping your posting game. Post relevant and relatable content regularly apart from engaging with other users’ content in the form of like, share or comment.
The best way to ensure you are consistent is by setting up a content calendar with the help of a social media publishing software like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Crowdfire so that even if you forget, your content will be published.
2. Create Original and engaging content
The majority of people use social media for entertainment, for news, staying in touch with new friends, or finding new friends or products apart from other reasons.
So don’t bore them with repetitive content and marketing messaging.
Instead, use witty and engaging content like memes, Instagram reels, stories, etc., while ensuring that your content images and videos are aesthetically pleasing. There is a reason why being Instagram-ready is trending.
Cred had launched an ad with Rahul Dravid as “Indira Nagar ka Gunda”, what followed was endless memes by the netizens. But what was more surprising was that many brands also joined the “Indira Nagar ka Gunda” meme wagon; above is Amul’s meme take on the advertisement.
3. Q&A Sessions for your followers
Organizing or joining Question and Answer sessions is the easiest way for engaging with customers and finding out the general feedback and queries about the brand.
Today’s customers expect instant gratification from their queries. And using social media channels for organizing Q&A sessions for answering all customer queries en masse is one of the best ways while instilling trust for the brand in customers. To engage more effectively with your customers, you can also create an exclusive online community like Facebook groups, Slack groups, etc.
SAP organizes regular Q&A sessions on their social media channels.
One tip before you organize your Q&A session, research all FAQs about your brand and product to answer efficiently to the user follower base.
4. Contests with Giveaways
Who knew one of the best ways to attract potential customers is by giving free giveaways?
You can organize various contests with free giveaways like in the above example for increasing your followers or:
- For informing your followers about a new product launch
- Increasing brand awareness
- Capturing leads, etc.
Your imagination is the limit.
And as for what you should give in this contest, you can either give them some offers, gift cards, your product, free subscription, or you can even create a gift basket with your brand’s customized t-shirt, pen, and other accessories and give them as the prize.
5. Everyone loves Polls and surveys.
One thing everyone loves to give, even when no one asks, is their opinion.
Use it by creating engaging surveys and polls to intricate curiosity about the brand along with getting crucial feedback from your customer base. You can even use this data to create more customer-centric marketing messaging.
Hubspot constantly posts engaging polls and surveys and creates extrinsic content by using the survey results to attract its customer base. Like in the above example, they created a poll for marketing ads to attract marketers, to lead them on the path of curiosity, trust and finally educate them about the benefits of their marketing automation product.
6. Content Resharing.
There is no harm in resharing others’ content, especially the content of influencers.
Influencers have already mapped the needs, likes, and dislikes of your targeted user base. Utilize their content on your wall by sharing it as posts and stories. There is no hard and fast way of content resharing now, especially with so many options; collaborating, page takeover, creating remix content, etc.
Your customers will see that you are giving them what they need and, with time, will start recognizing you as an affluent thought leader in the space.
Vancouver’s magazine on their Instagram page invites local chefs for casual conversation with their editor on their Instagram section called “Takeout Thursday.”
7. Engage with your followers on your and their posts
Engage with your customers by replying to their comments on your post and even commenting or liking their posts; it affects the impressions and engagement rate of your following content.
You should also reply back to your customer’s DMs or utilize a conversation automation tool like a chatbot for replying back to your customers and resolving their grievances instantly.
But engagement just does not mean Like, comment and share. It also means
- Reposting your follower’s shares
- Tagging influencer’s and competitors in the post
- Getting influencer’s to post your posts
- Guest posting
Or get in on all the social media wars on Twitter like Mcdonald’s, KFC, and Burger King.
8. Join the trend: Create some reels and short video content
Instagram’s move towards being a video platform just showcases the change in trend towards video consumption of the world.
Did you know the global online video platform in the media and entertainment market size was $218 million in 2016 and is now projected to reach $915 million by 2025?
People’s attention span is decreasing. No one has time for a 10–15min video, much less an hour video. Short video content like Reels and Tik-Tok is trending. It is why even B2B brands have started creating shorter-minute videos to engage their users.
One of the B2B brands that utilize this trend along with utilizing influencer marketing is Slack. Slack creates Reels on their Instagram page called Slack Frontiers, featuring luminary speakers sharing their experiences.
Conclusion
Apart from this, using the right hashtags, keeping the description engaging and crispy in the first two liners, and using visually achieving images and other media like music could do the trick of captivating your customers. But just creating engaging content is not enough; how will you know if your content strategy is working?
Using social media analytics can help you track and modify your content strategy for better engagement.
And remember, the key to creating engaging content is just asking yourself if you won’t engage with content that neither benefits you nor entertains you, so why will your customers?
Thanks for sharing useful information for us.