How to Increase Social Media Engagement
Do you produce complex social media content, but still hardly achieve engagement on your social media channels? Even well-thought-out content doesn’t always work if it doesn’t pull the user under its spell. To get the results you want, you can use interactive content to increase engagement with your target audience.
Whether likes, comments, shares or saves – these key figures are becoming more and more important on social media channels for the algorithm and thus also for your visibility. In this post, I’ll show you simple implementation ideas that you can use to offer your target group more opportunities for interaction.
Table of Content
What is engaging content?
Engaging content or interactive content involves the user more closely in the content. This turns the content into an experience and users don’t forget the content so quickly. The more interaction you offer, the more fun your community will be and the more time they will spend on your channel.
For example, surveys, quizzes, puzzles, competitions, or Q & As are suitable for interactive content. The most important thing is that the community can react to the content in some way.
The success of the interaction can be measured using the following key figures:
Likes: How often was it like?
Comments: How many users wrote under the post?
Views: How often was the post viewed?
Share: Has the post been sent to other accounts?
Clicks: How often was the post viewed?
Have you ever thought of that?
If you want your target group to participate interactively, then do it and get involved in your community. Distribute likes, diligently comment on other posts and draw attention to yourself. Preferably before you upload a contribution yourself. This will allow you to be seen faster and the community will see that you are also responding to interactions.
You can find out a lot about your community while maintaining contacts. This also allows them to see that their opinion is important and that people are interested in it.
Only those who know their target group increase engagement
To increase engagement on social media, you should think through your content carefully. Before you start randomly creating puzzles that no one cares about, you should be clear about who you want to appeal to. Determine who your target group is and what interests it has. Depending on the channel and target group, you should offer different content that is best suited. Because it may be that you should include your target group differently on LinkedIn, for example, then on Instagram. Product-specific surveys may work better on LinkedIn, while your Instagram community is more active and you can use raffles to generate more interaction.
When creating your content, you can orientate yourself on the following wishes of your target group. Because every target group wants:
- Be noted and appreciated
- Network with like-minded people
- Be rewarded
For example, you can let your community participate in the development process and ask which topics they are particularly interested in. Which product do you want to introduce next? Which properties should be discussed? Raffles, a look behind the scenes or exciting announcements before others find out can also lead to stronger interaction.
With questions about success
If you’re interested in what your community thinks, ask them. Companies often use informative texts. Sure, they want to draw attention to their latest product, report on the last workshop or give tips. But this hardly promotes interaction.
Therefore, build questions into your text. As a result, the reader is addressed directly and feels involved in the topic. You can also use Call to Actions to animate your community: “Register now”, “Register Here”, “Test for free”.
In addition, emojis can help to make the post more personal and exciting.
This is the only way that the contribution stands out from the crowd and gets stuck in your head faster.
Branding
Branding turns engaging content not only into fun for the user but also creates a basis that the user remembers the company. Regardless of whether it is the text or the visual representation – the company should be recognizable.
Hashtags are often branded. This is due to the fact that a reference to the company is established immediately and the contributions can also be collected under the specific hashtag.
social media marketing opens up new opportunities to develop strong brands and build relationships with your target audience.
With professional branding, you can:
- Promote uniqueness
- Differentiate from competitors
- Clarify the company message
- Increase awareness
- Retaining customers
- Strengthen company affiliation
- Support social media activities
Formats
Various formats are suitable for increasing engagement on your social media channels. You can achieve interactivity with the following measures:
- ask questions
- Demand comments
- Offer inspiration
- Make offers
- Deliver benefits
Stories
Stories offer an entertaining way of presenting the content in a new way. The target group is encouraged to deal intensively with the topic through entertainment. Gamification can also be used to get to know areas of interest from the community.
A popular interactive story, for example, is the survey: Are you Type A or B? Either … or?
Several options are given in two columns, from which the user can circle his properties or favorites and repost them in his story. The follower is also involved with fill-in-the-blank or bingo and can take part in this game.
Instagram has a few stickers to choose from that can be used to involve the community. If the user looks at your stories, it is also likely that they will get to your feed and interact with the content.
Guessing games in particular lead to a high level of interaction. The community can be entertained with these three stickers:
- Questions: The community is asked a question that can be answered freely.
- Surveys: The user can also choose between two options.
- Quiz: Several options are given. Polls can also be created in the feed on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Videos
Videos have a higher engagement rate than other formats. The dwell time is particularly long if you pay attention to a few points. For one thing, a video should immediately excite tension in the first few seconds. If it starts slowly or the topic is not directly recognizable, the curiosity of the user will not be aroused and he will continue to scroll. Therefore, you shouldn’t delay the tension until the end but start right away with a bang. This is the only way to attract attention to the entire video.
Images and swipe posts
Stories can be told easily with pictures and swipe posts. Storytelling creates a dynamic that also increases the tension on the content for the user. With search photos, for example, the user can go on a discovery tour and take part themselves. Under this, he can comment on his solution or forward it to his friends. The information is thus absorbed in an entertaining way.
This is how virality works
One post and the whole world knows your company. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. But on some channels, the rapid dissemination of content is not that difficult. Especially with platforms like TikTok, you can quickly achieve a large reach. For example, you can use your reach on a social media channel to refer to others. TikTok is the best example of this right now. It’s easier to have a post on TikTok that gets thousands of views and likes than it is on Instagram.
Viral content is made up of seven factors:
- emotion
- timing
- authenticity
- Comprehensibility
- Willingness to take risks
- planning
- Right platform
At a glance
Let’s keep in mind: If you want to have more engagement on your social media channels, your content has to be innovative in order to stand out from the crowd of competitive offers. Interactive content is a great way to do this. With branding, you can bind the user to your company in the long term. In addition, posts are more often shared with friends or acquaintances who represent potential new followers of the site. The shared factor, conversion rate, and length of stay increase as a result.
