Social media engagement is critical for building a loyal and active audience. While high-quality content is essential, engagement also depends on your interactions and strategic actions. This guide covers non-content-based strategies to increase engagement for your clients’ social media platforms.
1. Engage with Your Audience Proactively
Responding to comments and messages is the simplest way to keep your followers engaged, but you can take it a step further by proactively interacting with them.
- Reply to Comments & DMs: Make sure to reply to comments on your posts, as well as direct messages, within 24 hours. Encourage two-way conversations.
- Engage with Followers’ Posts: Spend time each day liking, commenting, and sharing your followers’ content. This shows that your brand cares about the community and can lead to reciprocal engagement.
- Use Polls & Questions in Stories: Instagram and Facebook allow you to add polls, question stickers, and quizzes to stories. These interactive elements encourage followers to engage in a quick, fun way.
2. Utilize Boosted Posts and Paid Strategies
While organic engagement is important, boosting posts with targeted ads can expand your reach and increase engagement with the right audience.
- Boost High-Performing Organic Posts: Select top-performing posts that have already gained traction organically, and use the boost feature to target a wider audience. This keeps engagement momentum going.
- Target Custom Audiences: Use Facebook and Instagram’s targeting features to show your boosted posts to users who are most likely to engage—either by targeting similar audiences to your existing followers or creating lookalike audiences.
- Set Specific Engagement Goals for Paid Campaigns: When boosting posts, set campaign objectives around engagement, such as likes, comments, or shares, to increase interaction on the post.
3. Increase Engagement Through Platform Features
Each platform offers unique features that can encourage users to interact with your posts or profiles in different ways.
- Host Giveaways or Contests: Run engagement-focused giveaways, asking users to like, comment, or tag a friend to enter. These can drive large-scale interactions and increase visibility.
- Pin Top Comments or Posts: On platforms like Facebook or Instagram, pin your most important or engaging posts and comments to the top of your profile to keep them visible longer and attract more interaction.
- Use ‘Share to Story’ Features: Encourage users to share your posts to their stories, and repost user-generated content to your brand’s story. This extends the visibility of the original post and drives more traffic back to your profile.
4. Leverage Community Engagement
Building a sense of community around your brand is key to long-term engagement and audience loyalty.
- Create Social Media Challenges: Encourage followers to participate in branded challenges (e.g., fitness or creativity challenges) where they post content using a specific hashtag. It boosts visibility and generates excitement.
- Run Live Q&A Sessions: Use Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn live features to host live Q&A sessions with your followers. These create real-time engagement and give your audience a reason to interact directly with your brand.
- Join or Create Groups: For B2B clients, joining or creating niche-focused Facebook or LinkedIn groups can help grow your audience. Regularly engage with the group by answering questions or sharing valuable insights.