10 Ways to Increase Social Media Engagement

Increasing social media engagement is every brand’s dream. It keeps you on everyone’s mind and regularly brings you a handful of customers.

But it’s a dream for a reason…

It’s difficult to achieve.

But in this guide, we’ve packed 10 super actionable and powerful tips that can help you achieve this dream with ease. If you exercise the tips below (just as recommended), you might be able to turn this dream into a reality for your business.

Let’s get started!

Why increase social media engagement?

Before we hop onto the tips, let’s assess whether social media engagement is worth your time and effort at this point in your business or not.

First, understand the concept and purpose of social media engagement.

Social media engagement basically refers to gathering as many likes, impressions, DMs, comments, follows, and shares as possible – especially from your target audience. By doing so, you achieve the following:

Long-term brand building
Organic growth (i.e., customer acquisition)
Loyal and proud customers
Referrals
Credible reputation in the industry

Social media engagement is also a part of the customer experience you deliver. For example, if someone comments on a post of yours and asks for a price, you must reply immediately to catch the interest of the prospect. Your prompt response might win the trust of the prospect and you could potentially close a sale.

Similarly, if you post a super educational podcast for your target audience, you’ll find them visiting your page often. This means they’ll stay updated with the current offers and may make a purchase.

Hence, you must increase social media engagement to increase your sales, build customer loyalty, build a recognizable brand, and improve your customer experience.

10 Ways to Increase Social Media Engagement Quickly

Let’s dive deep into the powerful tips we promised earlier!

#1. Use Analytics

The first step to enhancing social media engagement is to know what’s going on. And the only way to know it all is to have a robust social media analytics tool in your toolkit.

Some of the best social media analytics tools are:

Hootsuite insights
RivalIQ
Google Analytics
Brandwatch
Buffer
Brandchamp

These tools are a type of customer engagement platform and can be integrated with other customer engagement platforms as well as social accounts.

Once you integrate, you’ll get a report for all the engagement metrics for each post you publish. Some of the most important engagement metrics to look out for include:

Shares
Comments
DMs

Anyone who engages with your platform via these three is interested in your business. Positively or negatively – that’s a different subject.

Your job is to track these metrics and search for potential leads among these people.

How can you do that?

In case of comments, immediately get back with a super personalized and conversation-sparking reply.
In the case of DMs, satisfy their query as specifically as possible.
In case of shares and reshares, address them with their name, comment on the caption they’ve attached to the shared post and thank them!

Also, aim for the highest possible impressions and reactions.

#2. Use Scheduling Tools

Most analytic tools will offer a scheduling feature as well. But if they don’t, you can count on these tools to help you schedule timely social media posts:

Coschedule
Feedly
Airtable
Post Planner

Research your target audience and find out the time span during which they are most active. You can find these time ranges by observing peak activity hours via your analytics tools.

Schedule most of your posts for these time slots to get maximum engagement. However, every once in a while, schedule your posts for other times as well (i.e., the time your audience is not active).

This ensures well-balanced activity on your account and keeps the algorithms from demoting your account for non-human or robotic patterns. Plus, it keeps your audience from getting all bored out. You don’t want to get on their nerves!

#3. Create Content that Demands a Response

There are several types of content that you can create for socials. Most people opt to create entertaining or educational content that’s watch-only. The CTAs embedded within these are too unnatural or boring.

Optimize your CTA to prompt the audience to engage. You can do so by inserting self-test quizzes midway through your videos.

Ask the audience to drop their answers in the comments below and you can give them an answer at the end of the video. Or better, DM the answer to them.

If it’s a text post, embed the question or link to a referenced resource at the end of the post or the first comment. It increases the dwell time.

We recommend opting for first-comment because there’s a high chance, they’ll scroll others’ comments and end up leaving a comment of their own.

#4. Run Giveaways

Giveaways win massive attention – irrespective of your current following, industry, or presented offer. Whatever it is, the public wants it! Because everyone loves freebies!

So, the strategy here is to laser-focus your efforts on your target audience. Optimize the giveaway so only your prospects benefit from it.

How to do that? Start building a profile and engaging with relevant people for at least 3-4 months. Giveaways do not work well for freshly made accounts. You’ll need a bit of homework.

Once you have at least 100 genuine followers, you’re ready for a giveaway. Make sure the prize offered and the conditions set bring you the best possible exposure in your intended industry.

#5. Create a Facebook Group

Facebook groups and communities work best for gathering ideas for new posts. Frequently run polls to ask your audience what they want to hear about and address their queries and concerns in this group.

Make it a customer-friendly space, where one customer can connect with others and openly discuss their experience about your business with others.

It will give you some honest insights and skyrocketing engagement. Everyone appreciates honest product/service reviews!

#6. Use Videos

Videos have massive potential to increase dwell time.

According to research, 66% of consumers find short videos to be the most engaging. Another research tells us 73% watch videos before making a purchase.

So, videos are best at capturing attention if they are produced and edited well. We recommend focusing on the editing part more than the production to save costs. Invest time in coming up with an appealing concept, film the video, and then invest time in editing.

You can edit videos on your own, but it takes time. So, we recommend using video editing software or hiring a skilled video editor.

Apart from editing, make sure you film videos in Gen Z style. Use TikTok or Instagram reel style to produce engaging videos. If you use trending audio and trending effects, you’re likely to get more views.

How to find trending audio and effects? Usually, the platforms will recommend these while you edit the filmed clip. But for research purposes, search people on TikTok – I.e., the most popular names in your industry and check out what they’re using. And then use the same!

#7. Host Weekly Twitter Chat

Twitter chats are an excellent way to increase engagement and bring together lots of people who are interested in your brand or business.

Each week, set up a topic. And announce it beforehand, so people can join it timely. Use a hashtag for the chat and if it gets popular, you’ll get some extra eyes too.

#8. Hook with the First 2-3 Words

The attention span is decreasing day by day. So, if you’re not supporting your posts with visual media like images and videos, make sure you work on the hook.

The hook is the first line of the post. And even in this line, the first 2-3 words matter a lot. Make sure these words are emotion inspiring. Or something relatable.

For example:

Monday sucks.
Life’s difficult, but that doesn’t mean you give up.
GIVEAWAY ALERT.

It’s a good idea to support your hook with a relevant emoji.

#9. Post Memes

Memes are Gen Z language. The better you get it, the more engagement you will get. However, as a social media market, your true challenge is to bring relevant engagement to the social accounts.

You don’t want just anybody engaging with you. So, you cannot count on generic memes to bring you the engagement you desire.

Use generic meme templates to create relatable memes for your target audience. Notice how Semrush does it on its socials.

#10. Deliver Info Via Infographics

Infographics are yet another game changer. If you’re publishing blog posts or YouTube videos regularly, repurpose that content into a super handy infographic.

And start sharing these infographics on your Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and other photo-sharing apps.

You will notice that a lot of new people will start following you only for these knowledge nuggets. Plus, people will save these infographics a lot, which means the algorithms will boost you higher up.

Final Words

Although we winded up our list of top 10 tips to increase social media engagement, we promise these are only the start of a new rewarding journey.

Once you start implementing these, newer ways of boosting engagement will pop up. We encourage you to always research a tactic before implementing it. Good luck!