Increase social media engagement

Increase social media engagement

Engagement is a great way to measure how interested your audience is in what you have to say. Humans are social beings, and we’re hardwired to talk about the topics that pique our interest.

If we read something interesting that provokes a question, we want to ask it, to get a conversation going. This is engagement in action.

You don’t know what you don’t measure

It’s hard to know whether you have an accurate idea of your audience’s interest in various topics if you’re not specifically measuring their responses. Engagement shows you where your audience is most keen on interacting with you – and therefore where your best opportunities lie.

1. Conduct an audit of your current social media platform usage and audiences.

Record every social media account you’re currently using. Analyze your past content for engagement and effectiveness. Analyze your current audiences for their fit with your target market and the products you sell. Identify weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats.

2. Set goals for your social media usage and identify KPIs that you’ll use to measure progress.

Pick social media platforms that will help you reach out to your target audience. Set firm timelines and percentage improvement goals.

3. Create a social media strategy to bring your goals to life.

Create audience personas, set a ratio for organic to paid content that you’ll publish, create a content calendar, and monitor brand mentions.

4. Put together a content calendar.

Tools like Coschedule can help you to schedule updates, get analytics and automate much of the publishing process. Coschedule in particular has a feature called Requeue that fills gaps in your calendar publishing schedule automatically with a queue of social updates created earlier. It will pick from this list based on performance or when they were last sent.

5. Create content that your followers are more likely to share.

Analyze your most- and least-shared content to find commonalities in what prompts your audience to share – or not share – a post. Use these learnings to create content customized for your audience. Make sure your posts are easy to share, and increase your reach using brand loyalists and influencers.

6. On Twitter, Tweet about trending topics in your industry and stay well under the character limit.

Use hashtags sparingly and include a quick CTA. Retweet other users’ content, but add your own insights to make your Tweets worthy of shares.

7. Create content that prompts people to comment, and actively respond to build up the conversation.

Use giveaways to encourage responses, and continually review which tactics have had the most impact.

8. Talk to your followers. Ask them questions and thank them when they share or like.

Increase interaction with your audience, allowing them to create a loop where others see replies and also engage with you.

9. Use social listening tools to monitor and respond to brand mentions.

Build relationships with followers and industry leaders and write and publish guest posts on industry websites. Provide customer service through social media, and encourage customers to mention your brand in product reviews.