How to Increase Social Media Engagement
It’s no secret that most people are on social media, and that they’re engaging with branded content while they scroll. In fact, the main question marketing professionals ask themselves when working on a brand’s social media strategy is: “how do I get an audience to actually engage with the content?” Well, it’s easier than you think. Here are seven tips to create deliberate social media that earns more engagement from followers:
1. Understand Your Audience
The first and best way to increase your social media engagement is to understand who your posts are most likely to reach. Dig into the analytics of each of your social profiles to understand your followers in terms of age, gender identity, and other behaviors that might help you better tailor your content. Also carefully consider the platform where they’re following you, as it can indicate the type of content they’re looking to receive. For example, a 20-year-old woman on Instagram has very different expectations for social media content than a 45-year-old man on Twitter.
2. Create content that works for your audience
Once you have that clear understanding of your audience on each platform, you can start creating content accordingly! It doesn’t have to be difficult. Taking a few hours to capture photos and videos in a single session is simple if you shoot your content with each channel in mind.
For example, you might snap a few high-quality product photos for Facebook and Instagram, and then engage with your product in a few different ways to capture video snippets you can use for TikTok and Instagram reels. Once you have captured your content, cut it into different versions and crop it in various ways to maximize its usefulness. Don’t forget to write unique captions for each platform!
3. Present your content in a way that’s relevant to your audience
Now that you have your content captured and your captions are written, it’s time to get posting! By looking at the analytics on each of your social media profiles, you should get a good sense of how your audience is interacting with your content. Are you getting more likes, comments, or shares? Are there specific days of the week or times of day when your audience is most active online? Generally speaking, studies have found that weekday mornings are generally the best time to post for maximum engagement, but that might vary dramatically based on your specific audience and followers.
4. Choose the right type of content
You wouldn’t print out a blog and hang it on a random bulletin board at a coffee shop, hoping it gets read. By the same logic, it’s extremely important to choose the right content for the right outlet. As you start out on your social media marketing journey, test a few different post types, video lengths, caption lengths, and other variables on each channel to get a sense of what your audience engages with on each one.
You also might hear rumblings about “the algorithms” as you work on your social media plan. These aren’t random! Each social media platform has a specific set of coded logic mechanisms that serve content to a user based on their behaviors and preferences. While the “algorithm” isn’t published anywhere (each one is a trade secret), social media professionals tend to monitor when updates happen and how trends are impacted. Working with a team of digital experts can give you insight into what content types are working, and what you might want to plan for.
5. Keep an eye on trends
Leveraging trending content and current events can help boost your engagement very quickly when done properly. Meme formats for images; specific audio on TikTok and Instagram reels; and specific hashtags can not only maximize engagement from current followers but can also help your content reach potential new followers. However, it’s important to be timely. At a certain point, trends hit critical mass, and audiences become bored or even annoyed by them. Posting a trending piece of content too late could backfire and have the opposite effect, causing people to comment negatively or unfollow you.
6. Invite engagement directly in your content
Engagement isn’t just a KPI to measure as part of your marketing strategy. It’s a chance to have a conversation with your audience. Don’t hesitate to post content such as polls, videos that invite comments, or giveaways that require some kind of feedback to receive a discount or prize. By asking your audience to provide feedback, you can increase hard engagement numbers and gain valuable insight into your customers’ mindsets to help inform other aspects of your marketing plan.
7. Know what’s working and what isn’t
As much as we would all love for there to be a perfect science to creating social media content that gets engagement, there’s quite a bit of trial and error involved in the process. You need to be willing to experiment, create daring content, monitor reports, and abandon ideas that simply aren’t working. No matter how much you love a specific creative concept or social trend, if it isn’t receiving engagement in the form of likes, comments, and shares, then it’s no good. Check your post analytics regularly, and adjust your social media marketing strategy accordingly if it’s not working.
Takeaways
Social media exposure helps your readers find and learn about your business. Navigating all the ins and outs of creating content that performs takes time, so it’s extremely helpful to have a team of dedicated marketing professionals in your corner. Get in touch now to learn everything that the Solvable creations team can do for your brand.