5 Surefire Ways To Increase
Social Media Engagement

Social media outlets offer plenty of opportunities for businesses to connect with potential customers, and while most companies do have social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc., they do not always achieve the results they want.

Why?

While having an account is the first step, the real key to successful social media marketing is engagement, which is measured in likes, shares, follows, etc. Getting people interested in what you post is not only the key to impressing them, but it will also increase your reach and possibly lead to your page going viral.

social media marketing ROI

While there are many ways to improve your social media presence, the following five social media concepts are the key to boosting engagement on any social media channel, and they will also help you establish a livelier community around your brand.

1. Hashtags

Hashtags are the keywords of social media, and they’re how you catalog your posts on the database of information available on the social media channel you’re using. There are a few schools of thought on hashtags that also depend on what social media outlet you’re working with. For example, on Instagram, posts tend to either have a few targeted hashtags, or the maximum amount is used to cover as many topics and keywords or phrases as possible. The theory is that too many hashtags looks desperate and unfocused, but both methods have proven successful so it is worth giving both a shot.

2. Questions

Another valuable tactic for social media engagement, particularly on Facebook and Twitter, where comments and reposts are more common, is to ask your followers questions. It’s probably the most straightforward way to get people to actively communicate with your account and can also be a handy way to acquire useful market insights. Today’s marketplace is as competitive as ever, and the key to staying ahead of the game and competing with demanding markets is to stay in touch with your customers. Many sectors struggle to cater to the growing millennial market, who are more demanding than ever. Asking questions and collecting responses is a great way to test the waters when it comes to marketing campaigns or product development.

3. Co-Creation

The big dream of many social media marketers is to go viral. This can be done with posts, videos, and any media that somehow triggers a response from users and prompts them to share your content. While asking questions is one way to elicit a response, getting people in on a project is an even more effective engagement tool that has led to many viral campaigns over the past few years. Take for example the Ice Bucket Challenge as an example from the last couple of years, where a simple campaign became a huge success thanks to the widespread co-creation under a hashtag created by a Boston College alumn named Pete Frates.

By creating the challenge, Frates hoped to raise awareness about ALS after his friend was diagnosed with the rare disease. Whether it was the idea of the video or the intention that got people’s attention, the contribution each video made to the entire project is what blew it up all over the world, making it one of the most successful social media campaigns of 2014.

4. Coherence

Whether it’s a website, Facebook page, or Instagram account, all digital outlets of your brand should communicate a clear identity and theme. The key to successful brand management is delivering a clear and unified representation of your organization. Be sure that your posts are relevant to your brand while also related to the interests of your target market. While remaining active is important, avoid posting for the sake of posting. It’s better to post less often than to spam your users with random or irrelevant content that, in the end, will harm your page’s effectiveness as well as decrease user engagement.

5. Timing

This one is a bit of no brainer, but one big reason why many pages miss out on the attention of their followers is that they post when they aren’t active. It’s as simple as checking when most of your users are actively scrolling through their newsfeeds. Pay attention to when you publish, and your posts will automatically get more attention, and therefore are more likely to have an impact. Here are a few charts where you can see the estimated times where activity is highest on various social media channels. Cross reference this with the location of most of your followers and you can target them when their attention span is highest.