Sixty-nine percent of adults in the United States are using Facebook. Instagram has around one billion users as well. These social media engagement stats are hard to ignore not only for large companies but small businesses as well. Audiences are actively engaged on social media networks, which is an excellent opportunity to increase brand awareness and increase sales.
However, merely having a social media presence is not enough; you also have to find a way to get your followers to engage with your posts and your brand.
But how can you improve engagement on social media when most markets are as crowded as ever? Well, even though it is becoming more difficult, there are proven strategies you can use. Let’s explore them below.
Table of Contents
Analyze Your Current Social Media Engagement
Before you can start identifying opportunities for increasing engagement or trying out new strategies, you need to carefully analyze your current situation.
First off, to learn more about customer engagement, you could create an NPS survey and direct your social media users to respond. This could provide insights into their overall satisfaction and help you figure out what you could improve. Running full surveys, polls, or even interviews could also be an option, as the direct data from your audience is always the most valuable. If you want to go in a more straightforward direction, you could also post questions on your social media and ask people to provide feedback in the comments.
Then, you also need to look at the hard data. Most of the improvements you can make will be based on your performance analysis, as it will likely reveal glaring issues that need to be dealt with first.
So, where should you get started with your engagement analysis? Well, the first step is understanding which metrics to focus on. Some of the most crucial engagement metrics include likes, shares, and comments, but that’s just barely scratching the surface.
Companies with good social media engagement also usually have a steadily growing following, so if yours is plateauing, chances are your message isn’t reaching as many people as it could if it were more engaging.
Finally, you should figure out what your lead generation performance is like. The most important goal of social media is to help drive business, so figuring out what networks and even what posts have the biggest impact is essential.
Take Control of Your Posting Schedule
Even though it’s not the first thing most companies think of, the time of the day that you post can play a huge role in how much engagement your posts generate. It’s easy to understand that posting in the middle of the night won’t be very effective. Still, the same can be said about various times during the day when your audience simply doesn’t interact with social media.
For instance, research shows that the best time to post on Instagram is between 11 AM and 1 PM; this is when most of the Instagram audiences are the most active and ready to engage with your posts.
But how can you ensure that your posts go live at the right time? Well, first off, you should schedule Instagram posts to go live in advance using one of the available tools. That way, you will be sure that you’re maximizing engagement and getting the most eyes to see your posts each time.
It’s also essential to figure out the habits of your followers. Look at the data of how your posts performed at various times and try to identify patterns that might be useful in the future. You may find that your audience has different habits from the common trends, which would give you a unique advantage over the competitors that don’t have the same data.
Create Valuable Content
Posting at the right time is important. In fact, in certain situations, it can have a massive impact on your success. But at the end of the day, the timing of your posts will only matter if you can make the posts themselves exciting and engaging.
People get bombarded with an endless stream of content when they browse social media, so you’re always competing with videos, photos, and other posts that are designed to grab their attention and stop scrolling. So, if you want your posts to stand a chance, you need to follow the best practices of your social media platform, making the posts easy to consume, interesting, and optimized for maximum reach.
It’s also essential to have a deep understanding of your audience’s needs and the issues they are facing. By addressing those points in your posts, you will generate more attention and will get people to respond.
Finally, think about how to make your brand voice and image stand out from the crowd. Curating a strong brand personality can help you get more attention and make people want to follow you because they identify with what you stand for.
Engage with Your Followers
As the name implies, social media engagement requires you to be able to not only get people to respond but also engage with them yourself. One of the biggest advantages social media has to offer is the ability to have conversations and share ideas instantly, so brands should tear down any barriers that could make it seem like the posts are little more than advertisements.
Make sure to be active on your social media pages, reacting and responding to comments, asking questions, and even using user-generated content to nurture an inclusive environment. This will grow your social media audience.
Don’t limit yourself to your own pages, either. You can set up an alert to inform you when your brand is mentioned on social media, which will allow you to respond and resolve any issues before they can escalate.
If you want to really boost your engagement, you could even set up Q&A sessions where an expert answers questions related to your products, helping people overcome their problems, find the best solution, and also know which of your products would work best in their situation.
Today’s consumers expect brands to not only sell what they need but also provide personalized solutions, and engaging your audience on social media is one of the easiest ways to achieve that.
Use Plenty of Visuals
When it comes to social media, walls of text is rarely what grabs the most attention. Sure, you can create long posts if they’re informative, but make sure to supplement that with images or videos that help capture the eye initially.
You could experiment with using images with a distinct style to condition your audience to expect and react to your posts. At MoreBusiness.com, we regularly use a tool called Snappa (affiliate link) to create graphics. It includes a vast library of free stock images and templates and allows for intuitive editing.
Releasing regular videos will also help you stand out on most social media networks, especially if the videos are useful or entertaining.
Finally, if you are using a lot of text, consider using emojis to make it more lively, especially if it aligns with the brand image you want to create.
Final Words
Driving engagement on social media can be one of the most powerful ways to increase sales and brand awareness online.
Using the strategies above, you will be in a much better position to make steady improvements and facilitate your audience’s organic growth for years to come.
