Introduction
Engagement is what makes social media "Social."
Imagine some of the biggest social media platforms with tons of subscribers and followers sitting ideal, watching videos, looking at images, but not engaging in any conversation; instead, there is no action at all!
Won't it be dull to have silent spectators!
Engagement is what matters, and brands thrive for the best social media engagement rate to enhance their digital footprints. However, social media engagement strategy is a tough nut to crack, thereby we have got you the 10 most simple, quick, and powerful ways to uplift your social media engagement rate.
But, before that, let's understand what social media engagement is and why it is so critical.
Let's get going!
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What Is Social Media Engagement?
You may have a massive base of followers on social media. Still, the audience size is useless if they do not engage in activities like sharing your posts, writing comments, giving you a thumbs up, or any social media customer engagement. The engagement rate is measured by how successful you are on social media.
Social media engagement is vital for building brand perception, making noise in the industry, overpowering competitors, and gaining consumer loyalty. Through engagement posts for social media, you gain meaningful relationships with your followers. The metrics that define social media engagement can be stated as:
Why Is Engagement Important On Social Media?
Are you aware of the tremendous benefits that a decent social media engagement rate can fetch you?
The ideal way to measure your content performance, whether the audience resonates with it, is whether they are motivated enough to like and share your content can only be measured through social media engagement rate. Thereby it plays a critical role in deciding your content strategy.
Even on Facebook, the algorithm that decides what post the user will see and in which order every time you refresh the Facebook page is based on social media engagement posts and rates. Facebook analyzes the user's past behaviors and accordingly figures out which post the user will engage in the most.
Also, social media customer engagement can even lead to user loyalty, better relationships, and innovation. Customers expect brands to respond to complaints online; they love seeing brands engage in real-time conversation with their users. Reacting quickly, acting on feedback, and showing empathy are all part of the engagement, and satisfied customers will show their loyalty in no time.
The more the audience engages and spends time going through your content, product, or services, the higher the chances of conversion and ultimately better ROI. So it won't be wrong to state that social media engagement plays a vital role in conversion optimization.
So, now you know that the next time you make a social media marketing plan, improving the social media engagement rate should be one of your KPIs, and why is engagement important on social media? However, making it happen needs a lot of planning and research, and this brings us to our next topic…
How To Increase Social Media Engagement
While you may feel you have put your best foot forward to make followers talk about your services, they need a better dose of encouragement to get going and to get engaged.
Luckily there are many effective ways to get people talking on social media and put you on cloud nine. Here's what will get a better social media engagement rate:
1. Analyze your current social media engagement rate
You can't set benchmarks without understanding where you stand currently. Begin with some social listening tools that will get you a detailed report of your social mentions, likes, shares, and much more.
Calculate an average number of social mentions you are getting currently, figure out the peak days, and try studying a trend, if any, as it may help frame the future strategy.
2. Define Your Social Media Engagement Goal
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for social media engagement rate, be it for a product launch or sustenance, small and mid-size business, or enterprise. As per your business goals, your engagement strategy will be articulated.
We have mentioned some of the social media engagement goals you might consider:
- Developing or changing brand perception
- Developing new customer leads
- Collecting feedback about new products
- Educating your audience with resources and advice
- Launching a new product or service
These goals will define what social media engagement strategy will work best for you.
3. Research Your audience
Imagine talking about parenting to an age group of 18 years. Will you get engagements? Certainly Not!
Before planning your content strategy, know your audience to the core. Create target buyers’ personas, learn about their pain points, what motivates them, what kind of content they engage in, their demographics, etc.
Here's what you should do to research and find your target audience for increasing the social media engagement rate:
- Get to know your audience through Facebook Insights. On your Facebook page, click on the insights button and open the people's section to find your audience demographics and the topics they are interested in. This will help find out the right target audience and thereby plan to enhance your social media engagement rate.
- Analyze competitors' social media pages, and look into comments to understand what the audience is looking for. You may use tools like Followerwonk to analyze the competitors' Twitter followers.
- Use Google Analytics to learn about your target audience; it comprehends different categories like demographics, interests, income, etc.
- Check on Quora and Reddit, and deep dive into conversations to figure out your target audience.
4. Create and share valuable content and social media posts
Content and engagement go hand in hand. Nobody likes going through dull content. Content that solves the user's pain points, is well-researched, has something new to offer, is easy to read, and is visually appealing will gain engagement.
Focus on creating topical content. Be part of a conversation related to buzz around a current event.
Don't sell but solve users' pain points! Look at Nike as a case study, they never talk about how great they are as a brand, but they solve users' pain points. They work on building communities and enhancing their audience's lifestyle.
We have even got you the various types of content on social media engagement posts that will get you engagements:
Other ways to generate engaging content are by staying updated about what is happening around you, joining some noteworthy and trending conversations, and sharing opinions or comments on any event related to your niche. Additionally, you can do so by using viral memes and being instant in responding to comments and social mentions, and most important being proactive & responding timely to not lose upon engagements.
Engagement is a two-way street. Learn to hear what people say about your brand and respond to criticism constructively and positively. Acknowledge and address users' complaints, and show them how much you value their feedback.
Offer Value to your followers by giving them valuable tools that they can use to improve their lives, like guides or templates. For example, invite your followers to attend an upcoming event or a webinar you're hosting where they can learn something new and ultimately increase your social media engagement rate.
5. Utilize social listening tools
Thanks to digital marketing we have a plethora of tools to the rescue. Using these social media tools can help you immensely in driving engagements, managing your content, and monitoring your performance. Constant social media posts will lead to more engagements.
Here’s what you may consider opting for:
Using social listening tools like Biteable, you can easily create engaging, entertaining, and informative short videos to share on social media. In addition, Buffer is a great tool to schedule your content posted across social media platforms.
Get your hands on Buzzsumo, a research tool that tells you how your content is performing and perceived. Next, you may get friendly with Mention, a highly comprehensive social listening tool. It monitors mentions of your brand, products, or competitors in real time.
No wonder these tools get you some tremendous results, but they require time and resources. This is why most brands prefer working with a professional digital marketing company that may provide them with end-to-end solutions and drives social media engagements. This will let you focus on other primary tasks while the rest is well-managed.
6. Choosing hashtags that are trending and relatable
Hashtags are the connecting dots that make you reach the right audience, who have an appetite for your content, and motive to make a purchase decision. Thereby choose a hashtag carefully and try using tools like Hashtagify.me to analyze the trending ones.
Do you know that Instagram allows for up to 30 hashtags per post? But that does not mean flooding your content with hashtags as it looks unprofessional. Try using targeted ones only, and a decent number would be 10-11 to go for.
Use branded hashtags initially. A branded hashtag is a hashtag that involves the name of a brand. Here are some examples:
- #NationalFriedChickenDay by KFC
- #ShareACoke by Coca-Cola
- #LetsDoLunch by Domino's Pizza
- #OreoHorrorStories by Oreo
- #WorthSaying by L'Oréal Paris
7. Keep an eye on user-generated content
Are you aware of the finest marketing method with zero-cost involvement?
It's “User-Generated Content,” content by your audience, approved by them, and a testimonial for your brand. Here’s an example wherein Starbucks is strategically using content generated by the audience:
Along with engaging social media posts as mentioned above, another way of gaining user-generated content is by acknowledging your commenters and participating in conversations that make the followers feel seen and heard, and willing to connect with you later on as well.
8. Be creative with videos
"A Picture speaks a thousand words," and how the brain processes visuals faster than text is amazing. There is no second thought that videos have a much higher social media engagement rate; it also has a longer shelf life.
Use Instagram Reels; it's fun, people love watching it, and you can use unique filters to make your content stand out. Don't miss Instagram, IGTV, and Facebook stories as well.
In terms of content related to your niche, develop video content on the news and trending topics. Create videos that teach something. Like you are a clothing brand, and if you try selling your product directly, no one will consider it until you have something exceptional to offer. A smarter approach could be teaching the audience about things they may relate to. For example," Friday dressing basics," "How to dress for your interview," and indirectly placing your brand.
Come up with behind the scene videos, videos of your personal experiences. The audience will love it, share it, and you will enjoy a better social media engagement rate.
9. Connect with influencers
If you want to connect to a broader audience in a limited time, there is no better approach than working with an Influencer. They are the thought leaders with a tremendous following and can enable your message to reach out to the right audience. Also, they get your brand a powerful voice, credibility, and genuine authenticity! They even have expertise in creating engagement posts for social media.
To work with an influencer here’s what is required:
- Define your goals and the audience
- Mark a budget
- Profile and shortlist your influencer
- Check on campaign metrics
- Share and reshare the campaign
10. Work on creating a strong Call-to-action
Looking for engagements? Ask for it in a humble way through a strong CTA!
A compelling call to action leads to engagements in the form of likes, shares, comments, and mentions. You can ask for engagement in form of:
- Creating an account
- Requesting a proposal
- Requesting a quote
- Entering a contest
- Signing a petition
- Registering for a course
- Subscribing for newsletters
- “Sign up for your free trial
- Download my guide
- Get your free instant quote
These are some of the quick and profound ways to increase social media engagement for your brand. However, as we have stated above monitoring your efforts are critical, our next section will guide you on how to measure social media engagements easily and in no time.
How To Measure Social Media Engagement?
Now that you know the tricks to enhance engagements and we are sure that like and comments will be flying your way, measuring the efforts is equally important, and here is what you need to do on each of the social media platforms:
Facebook Analytics dashboard gets you comprehensive data on audience engagement. For example, it lets you track how many people saw your post, how many interacted with it, and whether people hid it or reported it as a span. You can also follow the audience's type of action on your Facebook page.
On Facebook, you can track the audience demographics, age group, interest, what time they generally visit your page, which section is the most-watched on your page, and your post-performance thereby, you may come up with a robust social media engagement strategy.
Similarly, you have robust tools to track social media engagements on Twitter. You can check on engagements, impressions, percentage reach, link clicks, audience preferred time of interacting with your post, time zone they live in, and much more,
Moving on to Instagram, with a business profile, you'll access Instagram Insights to track your social media engagement. The comprehensive dashboards get you insights into audience demographics, gender, interest, age group, the optimal time of the active audience, and the most popular content.
Going by the definition, engagement rate is calculated as the total number of interactions your content receives divided by your total number of followers, multiplied by 100%. For instance, your brand page has a massive following but receives a minimum number of interactions and it shows poor content quality. As per marketing experts, a good engagement rate is between 1% to 5%.
Engagement matters, so we are sure your next marketing strategy will have a holistic plan to increase social media engagements using the methods we have mentioned above. That brings up the concluding note of this post.
Conclusion
No matter how many followers you gain on social media, the actual representation of your social dominance is “Engagement.” Imagine being part of an event where there is a massive gathering, but everyone is a silent spectator — no conversation, no engagement, would you enjoy it? Of course not!!!
The crux here is to focus on enhancing the social media engagement rate by:
- Investing in producing quality content
- Paying attention to what users are talking about
- Keeping an eye on industry trends
- Creating engagement posts for social media
- Indulging in your creative heads to come up with exciting videos
- And above all, finding a creative digital marketing agency that gets you long terms social media engagements with the right kind of audience.
Tell us what you are aiming at? Is it a brand launch or a revamp of your campaign? No matter what, we have the most comprehensive solutions to boost your social media presence.
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Thank you so much for nice blog…