By: Piyush Singh
Currently, Social media has become one of the most effective tools for promoting any products and services. Today, from 5 out 4 companies use social media for advertising their offerings. According to research, people spend nearly 3-4 hours of their day on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. The platform is free to use, and it is a place where you can engage your target audience. If we specifically talk about the use of social media in business sectors, then with this tool companies can perform multiple activities like running marketing campaigns, selling a product, building a strong community of potential customers, etc. You can also do the same, but the question is:
How to do it?
Don’t worry; this blog includes the answer to the following standard questions that cross everyone’s mind-
- What is social media engagement?
- Tools to increase engagement on social media
- Tips to increase engagement on social media
- And at last, how can you measure engagement?
So, let’s get started!
What is social media engagement?
In simple words, a social media engagement evaluates the likes, shares, comments for any online business. It is used to measure ROI (Return on Investment) and to communicate with a potential customer. When a company engages with people online, and in return, the users react, it helps companies to build a reliable connection and brand image in the market.
Engagement helps in: –
- Increasing leads.
- Helps to build a more profound level connection with the audience.
- Gives you detailed data about the positives and negatives of your marketing
- Helps to increase trust.
Let’s talk about some tools. If you want a robust engagement, then you have to give quality content to your users. We’ve listed some top tools which help you to create quality content. So, check it out.
Tools to boost social media engagement: –
- For Image/template editing- You can use Canva for image editing like cropping, adding filters, etc. It comes with a lot of templates that are available for free. You can also use Adobe Spark.
- For GIFs – Giphy is one of the best tools where you get gifs by writing a simple keyword. For instance, if you write a dog, then it will show you the gifs of dogs.
- For analytics – You can use Hootsuite Insights, brand watch, and google analytics to know more detailed information about recent activity and engagement. These tools also track the performance of your current and previous posts.
- BuzzSumo and Google trends – These tools help you to find trending topics and track which niche is best.
TIP- If you have an excellent follower-base and only 5% of them watch what you posted that means either your content is not useful or you have fake followers. As a result, your engagement will decline. If you want to show up your services on their news feeds, then playing an ad would be the best option for you.
So, what’s the solution? How do you increase engagement on social media without investing a single penny on ads and other marketing tools?
Well, you need a plan. Now you may think “really a plan” yes, you need a plan to boost engagement on your social media accounts.
Here, we’ve listed tips which help you to increase social media engagement.
1. Post Time– User-engagement depends on various factors like at what time most of your followers are active on social media, where do you live, platform, and your niche. Analytic tools will help you with this. These tools give you a detailed report about your user activity, a description which shows when to post your content. You can use Facebook analytic and Google analytic for the same. As per the research, the best time to publish a post is between 12 to 3 pm and 1 pm to 4 pm during weekends.
2. Choose content wisely – Images and videos engage more audiences as compared to text-based content. But at the time of posting any of it, make sure that dimensions are correct, images are in proper ratio and sizes. You can also use other practices to boost engagement such as: by asking the question, running a poll, a competition campaign, and using trending and popular hashtags. Practical Tags help to find your content easily in a bunch of content.
3. Organize giveaways – Giveaways are one of the best ways to increase engagement on social media. People engage more when they get a chance to win a gift. And the best part of hosting a giveaway contest is it gives you UGC (User Generated Content) and free marketing as well. Giveaways save a lot of money which you have to pay for content and marketing. It also helps to gain more followers. You can use tools like VYPER and Game seek to run a giveaway contest.
4. Promotional Offers – Give exciting offers to your followers by providing discount coupons, goodies, cashback, membership/sponsorship, and free delivery for prime members. These are some of the prominent ways which help you to increase engagement and sales as well. While offering considers these points:
- Know your margins.
- Use Images of people who already used your product.
- Set an expiration date of the offer.
5. Prepare Q&A– AMA stands for ask me anything. There are so many ways to do Q&A rounds like in chat, poll, comment on a recent post, etc. It also helps the audience to know more about you and your brand. You can use an option as Facebook live, Instagram polls feature, and using hashtags.
6. Feedback – Want to test your product and feedback in return? Then social media is a place where you can do experiments for free. Many people are ready to be a part of something. Try this; people will give you an honest answer. It also helps to increase engagement and viral your brand.
7. Sharing others content – Sharing the content of your follower or customer on your timeline helps to increase engagement and builds a healthy relationship between both. Sharing other content shows:
- That genuine people use your product.
- It boosts other people to share their experience and review in the hope that they get mentioned by you.
- It gives more exposure.
8. Like/comment on other posts – Like and comment on the same posts which are related to your niche. By doing this, you might get new followers. The moment you added value in someone’s post then others will do activities like commenting, share your post, follow you, check out your other posts, etc.
9. Do partnership/collaboration – Research popular and big brands of your niche then do a partnership with them. By doing so, if they mention you on their profile, then it results in increasing engagement on your profile. And you might get mutual followers as well.
10. Use headlines – Headlines are the thing that your audience sees; make sure that the headline which you use on your post is exciting and catchy so that the audience is curious to open the full story. Try to make it short and sweet because no one wants to spend more time on lengthy content. Headline receives more engagement as compared to others.
Wrapping up: –
Nowadays, social media marketing has become a massive part of the technological world, and it is considered as one of the vital assets of businesses that helps them to reach their target audience around the globe. We hope that these tips work well for you to increase user engagement. Don’t be afraid to try new different things. Always keep Experimenting.