The Ultimate Guide to Increasing Social Media Engagement

Social media is an integral part of most social media management strategies today. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow brands to connect with customers and build communities. But simply having social media accounts is not enough – you need people to engage with your content.

Improving social media engagement takes effort, but pays dividends in the form of greater brand awareness, lead generation, sales, and loyalty. This comprehensive guide will walk you through proven tactics to get more people engaging with your social content. Let’s get started!

Why Social Media Engagement Matters

Before diving into how to increase engagement, let’s look at why you should care about social media engagement in the first place:

Brand Awareness

When people interact with your posts through likes, comments, shares, and more, it exposes your brand to new audiences organically outside of your existing followers. For example, if a follower likes your post, chances are some of their friends will see it in their newsfeeds, thus exposing new people to your brand. More exposure through engagement leads to increased awareness. Brands also buy Facebook followers to skyrocket their social media growth.

Reach More People

The more engagement a post gets, the more the social media platform’s algorithm will amplify it by showing it to more users. If a post goes viral and gets thousands of likes or shares, the platform will recognize it as popular content and boost its reach. This organic reach is extremely valuable.

Improved Rankings

Social media algorithms factor certain engagement signals into their ranking of posts, with metrics like likes and shares carrying more weight. A post with higher engagement metrics is more likely to rank higher in both hashtag searches and follower newsfeeds.

Valuable Insights

Paying attention to the types of content and messaging that prompt the most engagement provides useful data on what resonates best with your audience. You can use these insights to refine your content strategy further.

Relationship Building

When people actively engage with your posts through likes, comments, shares, and more, it fosters a relationship between them and your brand. They begin feeling invested in your company’s success. This drives brand loyalty and advocacy.

Making engagement a priority pays dividends across marketing and business goals. But how exactly can you get more of it consistently? Let’s find out!

How to Increase Social Media Engagement

Boosting social media engagement requires both creativity and strategy. Here are proven methods to get your audience to like, comment on, share, and overall engage more with your brand on social platforms.

Create Shareable Content

Not all content is created equal when it comes to sparking engagement. Certain types of social media posts are almost designed to be shared, thus driving interaction. Make developing this highly shareable content a key part of your approach. Focus on creating posts showcasing:

• Listicles: Posts formatted as lists or “listicles” (like this post itself) tend to be widely shared, as they naturally grab the reader’s attention and are easy to skim and digest.
• Quizzes: Interactive quizzes and polls prompt lots of engagement as people tag others or share their results. The instant gratification of quizzes entices engagement.
• Infographics: Visual infographics presenting data, stats, or tips concisely tend to be frequently shared, especially if they teach users something useful.
• Sharable Quotes: A powerful quote over a compelling image that people can relate to is often shared organically by followers. Pick quotes tailored to your audience.
• Behind-the-Scenes: Give followers an insider look “behind the scenes” at your brand, new products, office culture, etc. to make them feel invested in your company.
• User Stories: Highlight inspiring stories of how real customers use your product or service. This authenticity earns engagement.

Experiment with these proven engaging content formats to see which resonates most with your particular audience. Pay attention to top-performing themes.

Leverage User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) comes from your customers and followers, not your brand. Think of photos showcasing your product posted by a user or tweets mentioning your company.

UGC often outperforms brand-created content when it comes to engagement. It feels more authentic to audiences. Make re-sharing great UGC a consistent part of your social media management strategy. Run promotions asking followers to tag you in their posts using a branded hashtag to fuel a stream of UGC.

Optimize Your Posts

How you craft your social media posts themselves impacts engagement. Keep these tips in mind:

• Ask Questions: Post content that prompts responses through questions. This gives followers a reason to comment.
• Use Emotive Language: Trigger reactions by using emotional language and narratives that people relate to on a personal level.
• Share Value: Every post should provide some value to the reader – helpful info, entertainment, inspiration, etc. Posts that lack value get ignored.
• Use Visuals: Posts with relevant high-quality images and videos get much higher engagement across the board compared to text-only posts. Visuals are key.
• Find the Right Tone: Adopt an approachable, friendly tone that matches your brand personality. Posts that feel impersonal or too salesy tend to underperform.

Spend time optimizing posts tailored to prompt engagement before publishing them. The composition matters.

Give People a Role

When you give people a clear role or way to contribute, for example by buying Instagram followers, they are far more likely to engage with your social content. Some ideas:

• Ask for feedback on new products or initiatives
• Invite fans to contribute user stories or content
• Let people vote on upcoming decisions
• Have followers ask you questions and promise to respond

Giving people a defined way to participate leads to more two-way engagement vs. just passive consumption.

Run Engaging Contests

Contests, giveaways, and sweepstakes have long been tried and true tactics brands use to spur social media engagement. Typically, you require entrants to like, comment, tag friends, or share posts to build excitement and spread the word about the promotion. Offering desirable prizes tailored to what your audience wants makes the contest more enticing.

Engage With Followers

Are you actively engaging your followers, not just posting content? Beyond publishing content, brands should:

• Reply: Respond to comments and messages promptly. This shows followers you listen and care.
• Like Proactively like and react to user-generated content related to your brand. People will be more likely to engage with your posts if you engage with theirs first.
• Ask Questions: Directly ask followers for opinions, feedback, suggestions, etc. This builds a two-way conversation.

Brands that actively engage with their audiences through comments, likes, shares, and messages tend to see much more engagement in return.

Analyze and Refine

Consistently pay attention to the types of content that get high engagement vs. low. Look at when your followers are most active. Use this data and insight to refine your social media management strategy further. Always be optimizing based on performance data.

Go Beyond Likes and Shares

While likes and shares are great first-level engagement, you want to inspire deeper, more meaningful interactions through:

Spark Conversations

Post about topics that get people conversing through long threads of comments. Join the dialogue yourself. These real back-and-forth conversations keep followers engaged on your page longer while humanizing your brand. The best thing you can do to spark conversation on your brand’s page is to buy Facebook followers to make a good first impression on anyone visiting your brand’s page on Facebook.

Facilitate Community

Give people a place to connect with other fans. For example, create a Facebook group or use messaging apps to enable real-time community building centered around your brand. Superfans want to interact beyond just posts.

Offer Helpful Assistance

Position your brand as a trusted resource your audience turns to for advice. Share tips, how-to guidance, and useful information to show you truly care. Be the brand fans naturally tag when someone asks for help related to your industry.

Prompt Action

Move beyond passive engagement by giving people clear calls-to-action tied to conversions, whether it’s signing up for a webinar, downloading a resource, or shopping a sale. Don’t leave them without a next step.

The ultimate goal is facilitating connections between followers themselves and your brand through engagement. Think beyond vanity metrics like follower counts and critically evaluate the quality of interactions.

Common Social Media Engagement Mistakes to Avoid

While boosting engagement takes work, it’s equally important to avoid common pitfalls that can turn followers off and stunt your progress:

Aggressive Self-Promotion

Don’t make every post an ad for your products and offers. It feels spammy. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of posts should be valuable, relevant content like tips or stories, and 20% can directly promote products or events. Find that balance.

Impersonal Approach

Social media thrives on facilitating personal connections between brands and audiences. Adopt a friendly, conversational tone in your posts and interactions. Don’t take an overly corporate or sterile approach.

Ignoring Followers

When someone engages your brand by commenting or sending a message, always respond promptly. Nothing kills engagement faster than an ignored follower. Social media is two-way.

Too Much Automation

While some automation like scheduling posts has its place, don’t go overboard. The interactions need a human touch to foster engagement. Automated messages often backfire.

Getting Political

In general, avoid divisive political or social stances unless they directly relate to your brand values. You risk alienating parts of your audience. Keep the focus on your products and community.

Manipulating Engagement

Tactics like purchasing fake followers or using bots to artificially generate false engagement often backfire. Focus on organic community-building buying real followers on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and all other major social media platforms to engage people.

By avoiding these missteps, you put yourself on the right path to genuine engagement that converts passive fans into loyal brand advocates.

Best Tools to Manage Social Media Engagement

Thankfully, there are also many helpful tools available to make managing and boosting engagement at scale easier:

• FollowersCart: Take your social media presence to the next level with your followers, like, comment, and view services. Their packages make it simple to get the engagement you need across all major social media platforms.
• SocialFollowers: Stand out on social media with SocialFollowers UK’s suite of engagement services. They help brands and influencers get more followers, likes, comments, and views in a matter of minutes.

• Buffer: This lets you analyze peak engagement times and schedule social media content accordingly to make sure it gets maximum visibility and engagement.

• Mention: Monitoring and listening tool that alerts you when others mention your brand online so you can tap into these conversations.
• Canva: Easy-to-use graphic design tool with templates to create visually compelling social content.

• Rival IQ: Provides benchmarking so you can compare your social engagement metrics versus competitors to inform your strategy.

The right tools in your marketing stack will streamline the process of crafting engaging content, scheduling it effectively, and tracking performance. But tools alone won’t grow real engagement – that comes from human creativity, strategy, and persistence.

Doubling Down on What Works

Not every social media post will go viral and engage your whole audience. Like most things, 80% of your engagement likely comes from 20% of your content. Pay attention to specific posts, campaigns, and content formats that strongly resonate and drive engagement. When you notice something working, double down on it.

Look for ways to build on the momentum with related content that will continue capturing people’s interest. Repurposing top-performing content on different platforms or with a new caption can also be an effective tactic, just make sure it feels fresh each time.

The Importance of Consistency

Growing your social media engagement requires playing the long game and consistency. Posting frequently keeps your brand top of mind with followers and gives you more bite-sized opportunities to connect. Sporadic, once-in-a-while posting trains followers to tune you out.

But being consistent isn’t just about regular posting. Responding to comments, engaging back with followers, running promotions, etc. should happen consistently too. Make engagement a priority across the board.

The more consistently you put in the work, the more your social media presence and follower community will grow. And the more compounding returns you’ll see as followers start engaging more over time. Keep perspective and stay patient and consistent.

Wrapping Up

Improving social media engagement takes consistent time and effort, but delivers huge value. More likes, comments, shares, and real connections with your audience translate to greater brand awareness, lead generation, and loyalty. Use the strategies outlined in this guide—like optimizing content, starting conversations, leveraging UGC, and actively responding to followers—to kickstart more meaningful engagement.

Disclaimer: The above is a sponsored article and the views expressed are those of the sponsor/author and do not represent the stand and views of The Tribune editorial in any manner.