Social media engagement – How to get it?

Building a strong brand awareness

If you’re in a desperate need to encourage your social media followers to engage more with your content, you’re at the right place. We’re going to give you practical suggestions on how to increase social media engagement on your accounts to create better brand awareness. If you want to learn more about the term, brand awareness, read our blogpost Brand awareness – What is it really, and why is it important?

Brands tend to make the same mistake on social media. They often use their accounts to brag and generally talk about themselves continuously. This is a mistake as they don’t offer any real value to their followers. Contrary to this behavior, social media should be used to welcome people into the brand’s family and educate them about the industry they’re a part of. Another way to use it is to encourage a constructive conversation about products and offers of a brand.

The first path is always easier. But, if you truly get to know your followers and engage with them, you’ll be able to get a lot more long-term benefits for your brand awareness.

Create your own community

What is social media engagement?

Social media engagement consists of every interaction made on your social media account. Available social media metrics: Follower count, Likes, Shares, Comments, Reactions, and Retweets are all forms of social media engagement. If you want to find out more about how reactions on Facebook affect algorithm, read one of our best performing blogposts of 2019. –  Why Facebook reactions affect your page visibility?

It is imperative to monitor them frequently if you want to build a strong social media presence. The recommendation is to do monthly reports on selected KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) which you choose as the most important to track.

Engagement is the key to developing a meaningful relationship with your target audience. People nowadays don’t want to talk to a faceless organization online. They want to see your values, social, and environmental topics that you’re passionate about as an organization, etc.

Different types of social media engagement

Practical tips

Now that we’ve covered some basic terms here are a few practical tips for increasing social media engagement on your page. 

#1 Create and share interactive social media posts

As we already said, posting tons of content without some purpose or value won’t do anything for your engagement. This is where quality content plays an important role.  Creating interactive social media posts will get your audience more involved and ready to communicate their wishes and feedback regarding your product or offer.

But what exactly interactive content means?  It is a term that includes any post a user can click on, click-through, answer, or so to say, play with. As you may assume, this kind of content takes more effort to create and, in some cases, more money. But on the other side, users usually spend more time with it, and generally speaking, it drives more engagement to the Page. Some types of interactive social media posts which you can easily include in your social media strategy are GIFs, Quizzes/Polls, Giveaways, Multiple Choice posts, Infographics, eBooks or interactive videos. The choice is yours.

Create interactive social media posts

#2 Follow the trends

A simple yet efficient rule when creating engagement on your page is to stay on-trend. By following trending events in the world and connecting them to your industry and product you’re making your social media visible to people who might usually not see your content. This way, you can, in a smart and not too pushy way, reach a lot more people than usual.

Also, a great way to attract additional engagement to your Page is to jump on the latest social media bandwagon. Let’s admit it, every now and then a new “thing” appears on social media and everyone (and their grandma) posts it to their profile. The latest craze is a four-picture collage of your pictures on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. So-called, Dolly Parton challenge. Oreo is a brand which always stays relevant in their social media content. They used the trend pretty quickly and created its own version of it, as seen below.

Don’t be too serious!

#3 Be proactive

By proactive communication, we consider all the communication on social media about the brand, which has not happened directly through the brand’s social media accounts. This, parallel communication, is an opportunity to expand your followers base and create better brand awareness.

Also, when replying to comments on your page, make sure always to encourage further engagement. An excellent example of DO’s and DONT’s is presented below.

Engage with your followers

#4 Practice consistency

Being consistent is a golden rule for being successful in life in general. So, it is relevant for your social media engagement too. You must consistently create quality and interactive social media posts for people to engage in. Consistency is tightly related to trust and to create a habit.

Firstly, you’re going to create a community of people who look at you as a relevant source of information for your industry. Secondly, by posting consistently, they’ll have a habit of checking your social media. This will help your brand awareness and social media engagement.

#5 Ask specific questions and have fun

This is very important to keep in mind when creating your social media posts. It is not enough to only use a call to action (CTA) in them. It must be specific. So, for example, if you’re part of the food industry and you’ve posted a recipe. In the end, don’t just ask: Will you try it out at home?  Instead, you may ask: Do you prepare something similar at home? Share your little secrets of making a perfect dough at home.

Another great tip is, do not take yourself (or others) too seriously on social media. Fast-food chain Wendy’s is a great example of a brand who often pokes their competition through their witty answers. Just look at the hilarious examples below, which keep their 3.5 million Twitter audience very entertained on daily basis.

Get creative in responses

To conclude

These days, getting engagement on social media can be pretty hard. Facebook and Instagram algorithms are constantly changing. High quality and interactive social media posts are not enough anymore. At least, not to attract the wanted amount of page engagement. While paid advertising is a good answer on how to raise your social media engagement, it certainly shouldn’t be the only source to rely on. The tips above maybe won’t make your page an overnight success, but it will sure help you boost the engagement rate on your social media. And don’t forget to have fun along the way!