Increase Your Engagement On Social Media With 4 Easy Tips
Social media is not just for sharing your relationship status or posting images you will probably regret later in life, but a powerful marketing tool that allows your brand to connect and engage with your audience.
With over 3.6 billion people using social media globally, you have the world at your fingertips. I know, a cliché this early in the article is risky, but it is true. The level of connection social media provides to users allow brands to reach their audiences regardless of where they spend their time.
Throughout my time working with various non-profit organizations to help grow their social media engagement, I have picked up on a few key elements that assist in that process.
But first, what really is social media engagement?
Yes, you may think millions of followers is the end all be all of social media success, but does that really matter if only 2000 followers actively engage on your posts? Not really. Social media engagement is measured through things like:
- Follows
- Likes
- Comments
- Shares
- Views
- Mentions
- Retweets
- Click Through
These actions help your brand develop meaningful relationships with your current following while increasing your brand awareness to potential followers.
Let’s jump into some tips to help you grow that engagement:
1. Understand your target audience.
The first step — and in my opinion the most important step — is identifying your target audience that you intend to reach. Just going for the blanket “everyone” approach will not be effective because frankly, not everyone is interested in your content — and that is okay.
Within identifying your target audience, you will be able to identify the social media sites you should use based on their demographics. Check out the graphic below to gain a more in-depth understanding of each platforms’ users:
Think about it this way: your brand specializes in trendy clothing, would it be worth the time and effort to customize your content for all ages, including grannies? No. You are going to tailor the language, tone and visuals of the post to fit a younger age demographic.
2. Bring your content to life.
How many of you are guilty of mindless scrolling through your social media feed? Your goal when creating content for your brand is to break that mindless scroll, but how do you do that?
Get visual.
By simply incorporating images into your Facebook post, you can increase your engagement on that post by 85%. If you take it a step further and post a live video on Facebook, you can potentially attract six times as much engagement than your other content.
A great alternative to the traditional visual content are animated GIFs. Most popularly used on Twitter, the short and often humorous nature of animated GIFs appeal to the short attention span of users and results in 167% more click-through engagement than tweets containing static images. You can create your own animated GIF to fit your messaging or use sites like GIPHY to add a playful yet relevant animation to your content.
If done well, visuals provide just enough of a sneak peek of your brand’s messaging to drive users to engage further and continue exploring your content and brand.
3. Post with your audience, not at them.
There is no better way to engage your audience than to actively ask them to engage.
Now I am not saying post content that says in big red letters “Please like this post!”, I am saying to think about ways you can encourage your audience to engage. Offer them a reason to like and share your post, such as a contest to win some of your products. This way, you get increased engagement and new reach, and they get a chance to win free things (everyone loves free things).
Maybe your brand is unable to conduct contests and that’s okay. There are plenty of other ways to get your audience involved including:
- Polls
- Interactive quizzes
- Experience prompts
- Hosting an AMA (Ask me anything)
My favourite way to get your audience involved is to post about them. In my experience, people go crazy when they see themselves or their friends featured on a social media page (it’s basically as cool as being on TV). Take this campaign I created for the Pharmacy Association of Nova Scotia for example:
Not only will Rena share this post, but so will her parents and then maybe an aunt or uncle and so on. This one post can create a domino effect of engagement.
The more you encourage participation the better.
4. Get personal.
A huge part of being successful on social media includes building relationships with your audience and showing the human side of your brand. The more human you come across, the more your audience will feel connected to you.
A great way to show your brand is human is to literally show the humans behind your brand.
Create a campaign that revolves around featuring the employee of the week or conduct a social media takeover where one of your employees shares what their day-to-day activities are like.
Even better than the humans of the office are the pets of the office. Content that contains pets receive 295% more Instagram comments compared to other posts. So, capitalize on those office pooches because everyone loves a sleepy office pup.
Most importantly, building engagement means that you also have to engage back. When your audience leaves you a comment, you should comment back, and this applies for both positive and negative comments. A simple “So glad you liked it, Jane!” can go a long way.
Final thoughts
Focusing on how your brands can engage social media users is just one way to improve your overall brand reputation.
Although posting an image or hosting a contest are great ways to engage your audience, they are not magic keys to unlocking absolute engagement. They are just some of the many tactics you can use to your advantage.
Leave a comment below if you have any more tips that will help grow a brand’s engagement!
