Top tips for increasing your social media engagement
Ellie Wilbraham - 27 August 2020
Social media is the current ‘must-have’, with nearly 50% of the world’s population following, posting or sharing content from their own channel on at least one platform.
But considering the sheer volume of people actively using social, most of us often don’t see a positive correlation between the number of available users and comments and likes that we might expect for our content.
So where are all the consumers and why might they be scrolling past the content you or your brand are posting without interacting? After all, we’re all here to get the level of engagement we deserve…
What is social media engagement?
Social media engagement refers to a form of interaction between a customer and a brand through their social platform. This interaction could be in the form of a retweet on Twitter, a share on Facebook, a story view on Instagram or a comment on TikTok; the list goes on…
But how can you make sure that your followers stop, read your content and actively respond? Let’s take a look at how to increase your organic social media engagement.
How to increase your social media engagement
Track, analyse and measure
In order to prove what a great job you’re doing on social media, you first need to set up social media analytics to track and measure your success.
The likes of Facebook Analytics, Twitter Analytics and Instagram Insights are all helpful, free tools that can be used to analyse how people are engaging with you on your social channels, allowing you to track performance over time and understand your audience better.
Set SMART goals
Setting goals is another important step in your social media journey. Your business should set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Use your social media tools to determine a baseline of your current performance and create SMART goals in order to measure your progression going forward.
An example of a SMART goal may be: “We will post content on Facebook 3 times per week, with the aim to increase our likes, comments and shares by 5% in 2 months.”
Having SMART goals gives a focus and purpose to help you avoid posting content just for the sake of it.
Get to know your target audience
Identifying your target audience will enable you to decide:
- Which social media channels you should be present on
- The type of content you post
- Your tone of voice
Remember that in order for you to increase your social media engagement, it is key that the content you post is relatable and truly speaks to your defined target audience.
Prioritise quality over quantity
Data such as follower count is just seen as a vanity metric. Indeed, physical engagement online is becoming noticeably more important and discussed by brands. It’s much better to have just 100 followers who interact with the content you post, rather than 10,000 followers who don’t. We’re looking for an engaged audience, not just a large one; it is the value your followers add that is important here.
With this in mind, it’s important to not take any shortcuts in building your social media following and engagement online. For example, make sure you avoid buying Instagram followers, who will make your account look spammy and uncredible and add no real value to your social media presence.
Variety, variety, variety
It is important to share a range of different content on your social media platforms in order to keep your followers engaged with your brand. Sharing a wide variety of content helps to ensure your social media feed doesn’t become repetitive and boring, in turn, keeping your followers interested and helping to attract a whole new following too.
To get you started, here are some innovative social media content ideas:
- High-quality images
- Infographics, charts and graphs
- Video content
- Ephemeral content, such as Instagram stories
- Gifs and memes
- Screenshots
- Text overlays
- User-generated content
- Live videos
- Polls and Q&As
Host a giveaway
Hosting a giveaway on one of your social media platforms really helps to boost engagement and raise brand awareness online. Bringing other companies into the picture when hosting a giveaway also massively increases the reach of your post, so you can target a much wider audience.
Take a leaf out of Mob Kitchen’s book, for example. They run regular giveaways to boost their engagement. Their most recent giveaway quite possibly being their best one yet; they’re giving followers the opportunity to win a year’s worth of Deliveroo!
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Utilise user-generated content
User-generated content involves making use of content that has been created by your customers and followers. This type of content helps you to build connections with your followers, show the human side of your brand and share truly engaging and exciting content. In addition, it helps you to increase your reach and portray your brand to a wider audience as it relies on your followers to share their content, tag your business and get your brand out there.
When we think of fantastic user-generated content, GoPro immediately springs to mind, however, there are a huge number of brands who take full advantage of user-generated content, particularly on Instagram. Essie is another great example of this, encouraging their followers to tag @essie in their posts for a chance to be featured on their Instagram account.
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Use humour (where appropriate)
According to the 2019 Sprout Social Index, 67% of consumers were more likely to like entertaining content on social media. Whilst it may not be appropriate for all brands to capture their humorous side on their social platforms, and commenting on controversial topics can be damaging to a brand, humour can go a long way on social media.
It was recently announced that Gymshark, founded by ex-pizza delivery boy, Ben Francis, is worth over £1 billion. Ben founded Gymshark from his parent’s garage back in 2012, when he worked a part time job at Pizza Hut. Gymshark took to Twitter and mentioned Pizza Hut in a tweet in a humorous exchange that definitely got fans of the brand talking.
hey @pizzahutdeliver u up? how’d you feel about @BenFrancis1992 delivering one last pizza? you know for old times sake
— Gymshark (@Gymshark) August 17, 2020
Build relationships
In 2020, it’s not enough to simply just post great quality content. In order to cut through the noise, it’s crucial to connect with your followers, reply to comments, ask and answer questions, start conversations and get your target audience interacting with your brand. Building relationships with your audience is a key takeaway for building your social media engagement.
If you’d like a hand with your social media strategy to help take your social media engagement to the next level, get in touch today. Our team of social media experts here at Wagada would be delighted to help.
