With the advent of the digitization era, social media has begun to pave its way in the world of marketing at a rapid speed. It has become an important catalyst for brand growth of many businesses. If social media platforms are utilized properly, they have the capability of driving online conversions & sales and improve company profits. A majority of brands use social media but a lot of them fail to understand the value of engagement. For becoming a successful social media user you ought to have a good social media engagement strategy

What is Engagement?

Engagement is basically considered to be a metric for measuring the performance of a particular profile, business or brand over various social media platforms. In simpler terms, Social Media Engagement refers to the response or reaction that one gets from followers for their social media efforts.   

What are the types of engagement on social media platforms? 

You might have often seen people asking their fans or followers to like, comment, share, or retweet a post or tag a friend in the post. These all are basically the different forms that they use to increase the engagement on their posts. 

Why is Social Media Engagement important? 

Usually, the power of engagement on social media has been underestimated. It's been since few years many brands and companies have started to understand the value of social media engagement for their business growth.   
Social media engagement not only enables interactions with your customer but also helps in establishing a long-term relationship with them. 
It helps in increasing customer loyalty. 
It helps in creating brand awareness among potential customers. 
It gives an edge to your business over your competitor. 

Now, we have come to know about the importance of increasing engagement. Let’s have a look at some important tips for increasing Social Media Engagement: 

1. Post content on a daily basis

Make a routine to post on your social media handles on a daily basis. This enables your brand to be at the top of people's newsfeeds with witty, engaging and entertaining content. It increases your brand visibility for customers and reminds them about your presence on social media. Usually, a couple of posts a day is enough for this. 

2. Select the right time slot 

If you are looking for more engagement on your social media handles, it’s important to schedule the posts at the right time. It’s important because of the non-availability of social media users on online platforms all the time. So, posting at a time when most of the followers are not active, may result in loss of potential engagement opportunity with them.  

3. Quick response to Customer Issues and Questions 

Just sharing content on social media is not enough for increasing engagement. Social media acts as an additional platform for providing customer services. The ease of access to social media has increased the expectations of its consumers. They expect a fast response when they use it. The faster you respond to the queries of consumers the higher will be the engagement rate. 

4. Organize Contests 

Organizing contests and giveaways have become a recent trend among various brands and companies due to its growing popularity. Running a simple contest or game has usually proven a great tactic for them as it increases the engagement on the social media platform.  

For instance, you could ask your followers to answer simple questions then like or follow your page, like and share the post, or share their favorite story about your brand for a chance to win a voucher or gift coupon from your brand. 
 
5. Visually appealing posts 

One of the most important tips for increasing social media engagement is using visually appealing content. Using images as content helps in increasing the interaction rates for all social media platforms. 
For instance, Facebook posts with images have higher interaction rates as compared to regular posts. Interesting Instagram stories, holding photo contests, using interesting infographics, etc. are some of the tips for creating visually strong content. 

6. Analyze the Engagements 

In order to increase your engagements on social media, you have to analyze them. Many analytical tools have been introduced that are very helpful in monitoring the levels of engagement on websites, social media platforms, etc. One of the most popular analytical tools is Google Analytics. 

Various social media platforms have also introduced analytics tools for their platform such as Facebook Insights tool, Twitter Analytics, Instagram Insights tool, etc. These tools give the user an in-depth analysis of posts by tracking the number of views, likes, shares, comments, etc. 

Let’s sum up 

Increasing social media engagement is a continuous task. You have to know your audience by interacting with them. Make optimal use of the analytical tools to know which efforts are more effective. 

Most important tip for increasing your engagement is to ‘be extremely active’ on social media. Hard work and consistency will pay in the long run!  

Start working on Social Media Engagement strategy today!