If you are a business owner then you ought to know the importance of using social media to grow your business. The problem is that most of us undervalue the impact engagement on social media has on a business.
Engagement in social media is measured by different metrics such as comments, retweets or shares, likes, click-throughs, branded hashtags, and mentions.
In this day and age, social media is an important component of digital marketing. But if one social media strategy worked last year it is unlikely that if you use it this year you will achieve similar results.
It is estimated that the global active users for social stands at 3.4 billion this year compared to 2.82 billion last year. What this means is that there is a shift that is affecting the social media audience.
Compared to previous years where social media users would prefer one channel over another, the shift entails users taking a temporary or permanent break from the platform.
Social media engagement
As a term, Social media engagement is an inclusive term and involves a lot of aspects. All the major social media platforms mention a component of engagement for free in their analytics dashboard. The trick to success here is first grasping what engagement is broadly and then seeing it in a micro sense.
Only on Facebook, engagement means different ways of interacting with the page’s posts, its profile, messages and mentions, and all other things. So, when you see engagement numbers for a month or even years, the bird’s eye view gives you an idea of a common trend. However, if you are looking for places where you can improve, then you have to go through the other metrics as well.
Let us take Facebook as an example, engagement on the platform can be sorted into multiple areas:
Interaction with the Page: can be done through Call-to-action button clicks, profile clicks, any other tab clicks
Interaction with the posts: This you can do through comments, likes, shares, and other methods.
Interaction through direct messaging: You can get messages on your page or reply to someone’s message.
Interaction with different Pages: This can be done through mentions of your Page, or you may comment on other Pages’ posts
If you want to increase your engagement rates on social media, the following are social media engagement strategies that you need to adopt.
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Analyze your current engagement
To understand how to improve the engagement, you need to first analyze it. Engagement analytics are available for all significant platforms separately. In case you use a management platform, you can see all the data mentioned in summary form.
As mentioned above, a number of engagements are added for Instagram, whereas the post engagement rate for Facebook is averaged out. How would you analyze this? In case you see the post, engagement is dropping every week, then the posts have to be adjusted as per the audience’s mood. Also, if one of the posts has a higher engagement rate than others, you should find out the reason why it is successful. This will help you find out what kind of content you should focus on if you want to increase engagement.
2. Set goals and define metrics
You should set clear engagement goals now, so you have an idea where you need to focus your content efforts on. If you are looking to increase the posts’ engagement, you will first have to make exciting content. The metrics that you choose should be based on post engagement. That means something like how many people interacted with the posts and what level of engagement they got back.
3. Understand the components of an engaging post
Remember that every platform would be different based on what they prefer over another when it comes to creating engaging posts. However, mostly the basic module of each platform remains the same.
4. Talk About Your Topic (Not Just Your Brand)
When you get to meet new people, the basic thing is to start talking with them. Creating content and publishing the same into your feed is great to let people know what you are handling. However, for that, you need to have followers. Join groups and create your groups to get some traction for yourself.
5. Join Question & Answer Sessions
Customers need information about your brand, and that you can do by answering their queries. Let them join your Q and A sessions and clarify any doubts they may have about your brand. In case you can provide relevant answers to their problems and start discussions with them before the competitors do so, they will come back to you for everything.
Consumers do not have the patience to find answers to their problems. Having a dedicated customer response team will be the perfect solution to take care of their needs.
6. Share Other People’s Content
In case someone else has provided answers to that doubt, you may use their content. Customers will see that you have provided them with the solution. Your social media feed should be useful and help them get attracted to your brand and encourage them to be your follower.
Also, have a variety in your content and ask different people to contribute. This interests the customers as they get bored if they have to listen to the same person saying the same thing repeatedly. So share and reap the benefits.
7. Enhance Community Engagement On Social Media
It is easy for brands to engage with the audience and customers on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. As a business, for you to create a valuable experience for your audience, you need to post great and useful content as opposed to selling blatantly.
When you do this, it will help in maintaining your business’ presence on social media and encouraging audience interactions. For example, you can share success stories from your loyal customers or use image posts to tell a story.
The final goal of your presence in social media should be to expand the reach and drive to generate more conversions. If you want to increase your engagement, you should build social media content, which encourages conversions as well as build community feeling.
To engage with your customers, you could carry out a quiz then ask them to use like or share to answer the question. Once this is done, your posts will be able to attract new leads.
8. Influencer Marketing And Word Of Mouth
Both influencer marketing, as well as word of mouth, achieve the same result, which is to increase the sales figure. Social media communities can help market your business through word of mouth.
These generally entail communities interacting with the business’ advocates to champion the brand’s cause to their social connections, family, and friends.
On the other hand, social media influencers such as celebrities, bloggers, and experts in your field will provide your business with high publicity compared to paid ads.
However, reports show that more than 61 percent of customers depend on recommendations from friends and family over celebrity endorsement.
9. Use Other Platforms
Social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram have been used by brands for B2B marketing. But in recent times, users have lost interest in these platforms, which means that brands have to put in a lot of hard work to boost their engagement rates and attain great organic reach.
For instance, Twitter has seen a rise in the growth of subscribers, but the number of active users has declined. Likewise, social media giants Facebook has seen a decrease in users, especially among young audiences.
If you want to attract the attention of the young audience you can use alternative platforms like TikTok. Alternatively, companies can use Pinterest to grow their e-commerce sales via social media platforms.
The benefit of using other platforms to boost your engagement rates on social media is that it will help your business target audiences not available on other platforms.
10. Focus On Customer Service
In today’s digital era, customers are using social media platforms to engage with companies. Reports show that in the last year, over 28 percent of customers have used social media to contact brands.
Besides, more than 30 percent of clients claim that social media is a convenient method that offers 24 hours 7 days of customer support.
Therefore, if you want to boost your engagement rates on social media, you need to have efficient online customer service.
Customers will look at the way you engage with other people, including online reviews, and judge your brand. If you want your customers to be active and loyal then you need to have reliable customer service.
11. Use Story Feature
Most social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat have a story feature that you can use to boost your engagement rates. When you give your business story on social media, your audience will visually consume it rather than reading it which can be monotonous.
If you do not want to be left behind by your competitors, then you need to use stories as part of your social media marketing strategies.
In conclusion, if you want to boost your engagement rates on social media, then you should not stick to one platform but use other platforms as well.
Social media keeps evolving each year and what you thought was big last year is not the same this year. To target your audience well, you need to be on the lookout for new social media platforms that have the best engagement rates.
