Social media marketing has been one of the leading marketing trends of the last decade. When it’s done right, your customers will look forward to your marketing efforts and they may even consider advertising your business for you.
Simply posting content to social media is not enough, though. You need to convince your audience to like, comment on, and share your content to help the algorithms notice you.
Social media organic reach has been declining for years. Organic reach is how many people your content reaches without paying for sponsored content.
Unsponsored Facebook posts‘ (posts not paid for i.e. boosted posts or ads) current reach is estimated to be around 5.2%. Moreover, posts from branded Facebook pages only reach about 2.2% of a page’s followers.
This downward trend can be seen across virtually every social media platform.
Instagram’s organic reach has been plummeting for years. The only exception was a brief uptick during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In what appears to be a paradox, organic reach is falling while social media usage is soaring. However, this makes complete sense because social media algorithms are built-in to encourage you to pay for ads to increase your reach. For example, the Pew Research Center reports 70% of Americans use social media even while organic reach is declining.
What, then, should you do to increase social media engagement? Audience engagement is one of the best ways to boost your social media content without paying for ads.
Below, we give you some tips on how to increase social media engagement to maximize your social media efforts and optimize your social network. So read on!
Increase Social Media Engagement With Instagram Carousels
Instagram is one of the leading networks for social media marketing; there’s no denying that fact. 83% of Instagram users discover new brands and services on the network. Moreover, the average Instagram user spends 53 minutes on the app each day, second only to Facebook at 58 minutes.
Instagram’s popularity is both the cause and effect of its declining organic reach. Some of it has to do with parent company Meta tweaking the algorithm to generate more ad revenue. It is also due to the fact that there’s simply more content out there, making it harder for a single post to receive recognition.
Carousel posts are an easy way to generate engagement—particularly for smaller brands. Therefore, if you’re a social media marketer working with an account with less than 5000 followers, you need to incorporate carousel posts into your social media strategy.
A carousel post is a post with multiple images, in case you’ve never heard the term. This is indicated by the Gallery icon in the top-right corner of an image.
A variety of excellent tools are available for creating Instagram carousel posts. For example, the popular design tool Canva features numerous high-quality templates for creating carousel posts. You can make pro-quality graphics even if you do not have any experience with graphic design.
Post Video Tutorial Content
Video has the highest engagement rate of every type of content on every social network. The power of video marketing is undeniable.
Video receives up to 1200% more shares than posts featuring either images or text. By the same token, video posts on Twitter receive 1000% more engagement.
Posting tutorial video content is an easy way to generate engagement that accomplishes several goals simultaneously. First of all, it satisfies a genuine need for your audience.
Therefore, it simultaneously showcases your brand as a thought leader in your industry. Second, it reduces the need to create original content for every channel.
A popular trick to increase social media engagement using video tutorials is to repurpose video content. Every major social media platform now supports video content. In light of this fact, you might consider making a short video and then share that to Instagram, YouTube, or even TikTok if you’re trying to engage with a younger audience.
Use Polls
Polls offer an easy way to increase customer engagement on social media. As a matter of fact, this is especially true if they’re simple “A/B style” as they do not require much time or mental effort to complete.
In case you’re not familiar with the term, A/B testing is when you make multiple versions of something and then measure your audience’s reaction to each.
Additionally, you can always include a signature on your poll, so you increase brand awareness and boost your authority at the same time.
A/B polls are doubly great as they simultaneously fill some of the niches of traditional marketing to use in your social media marketing campaigns. It is possible to gather marketing data about your audience and advertise simultaneously.
Go Live
Live video content is uniquely qualified to boost customer engagement in various ways. First, there’s the instantaneous engagement when you’re “on the air,” where your audience can ask you questions and engage with you directly.
Additionally, there’s the secondary effect of making your customers look forward to your social media content. No one likes to miss out on things which is one of the main reasons scarcity marketing is so effective.
Curated List of Tools
A nearly endless variety of powerful tools are available for creating high-quality social media content. Much of it is even free! Therefore, if you’re serious about learning how to increase social media engagement, you should go through some of the popular tools and observe what works well for you and your brand.
Adobe Spark lets you create professional-quality graphics with minimal effort. You do not even need to have graphic design experience.
Some research into social media scheduling software may be necessary, as well. Then you’ll want to experiment with your digital marketing strategy by scheduling different kinds of posts at different times. Pay special attention to which types of posts receive high levels of engagement at each specific time.
Use Infographics
Finally, infographics are an excellent way to increase social media engagement. On social media, it’s all about communicating as much as you can in as little time as possible.
Infographics just beg to be shared, as well. If you’re creating your own infographics or data visualizations, you can sign them with a watermark as you did with your online polls. These infographics fulfill the same function, boosting your brand awareness and establishing yourself as an authority in your industry.
Collaborate
Remember, it’s called social media. Communicating and interacting with your audience and others working in your industry is a sure-fire way to take your social media engagement to the next level.
Collaboration could be as simple as asking your audience a question or asking them to leave a comment. It could also be working with other creatives in your industry to create or share content from your brand, thus acting as influencer marketing.
Collaboration is also an easy way to show you’re a part of your community. People love to give back to generous brands. Consider this a way to showcase your tastes, skill, and knowledge of your niche, as well.
Excelling at social media marketing is tricky and increasingly so with each passing year. Following these tips on how to increase social media engagement will help you think like a social media marketer, a data scientist, and a traditional marketer all at the same time.
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