Why Engagement Matters on Social Media
Social media is not only popular but important as well. It’s imperative that businesses these days have some sort of presence on social media in today’s digital world. Businesses need to meet people where they’re at. But just being present on social media simply isn’t enough. The content you share on your pages needs to be captivating and engaging to your audience. The more engaged your audience is, the more likely they are to buy your product or service or simply talk more about you.
Understanding Engagement
Before you start to create more engaging content, it’s important to understand just what engagement means. Engagement is how people participate and interact with the content you’re producing. However, it is much more than vanity metrics such as likes and follows. Engagement is also shares, comments, clicks, mentions, and more!
Engagement metrics are really important because they are the ones that more directly impact your brand awareness, loyalty, and even conversions. When people find your content engaging, they are much more likely to talk about you to others and try your product or service for themselves.
Type of Social Media Engagement
Likes, comments, and shares are all engagement metrics. However, they are all different from each other. Let’s dive into what exactly each engagement means:
Likes: When someone double-taps, thumbs up, or hearts your content.
Comments: When someone types something up on or under your post.
Shares: When someone takes your content and sends it out to their profile, keeping your original post.
Clicks: When someone clicks on a link, the website links in your profile, or call to action buttons.
Mentions: When someone talks about and tags your brand in a post they’ve created.
There are many more than that, but those five metrics will give you a great foundation for understanding engagement more deeply.
While these are all engagement metrics, each of them implies a different level of engagement; some engagement metrics are just more important than others. I mentioned vanity metrics earlier. Vanity metrics are things like likes and follows. They show someone initially that it looks like you have a big audience and therefore, your content must be loved by all. It’s important to note that though you may have a large audience, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have an engaged audience.
It takes more time and effort for people to comment on, share, and mention your content, making these engagement metrics more powerful. When people are engaged with your content, it shows you that they love your content, ideas, and brand as a whole. Your loyal consumers are the most likely to show you this type of love on social media, and they may even start creating content for you, for free, also known as User Generated Content, which you can then go and use for your marketing purposes as well.
In summary, when it comes to engagement, quality is much better than quantity.
How Engagement Differs on Platforms
Each social media platform offers different types of ways for users to interact with content. The general gist is pretty similar across platforms, but let’s dive into some differences between a few major platforms.
Instagram, for example, doesn’t support having links in posts (though you can have links in your profile and now stories). Therefore, links may not be the most engaging piece of the platform. Comments, shares, and mentions will be much more impactful on Instagram.
Facebook, on the other hand, does support links. In fact, they even have link previews as an option when posting. Link clicks may be a good engagement metric to fish for here. On top of that, if the articles you’re linking to are good enough, you might end up with several shares as well!
TikTok does not really support links. They have them in profiles, however, you have to have a certain number of followers. The best metrics to be planning for on this platform are comments and shares. Keep in mind, that shares can be public or private. Social platforms will also recognize when users send bits of content to their friends in private messages.
The same thing can be said for all platforms though, they will reward you for having engaging content.
Benefits of Having High Engagement
Taking the time to create engaging content will pay off for you in many ways. Your audience will love it, but so will each of the platforms. When the Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok algorithms get a whiff of your engaging content, they’ll start to push the rest of your content to the top of your followers’ feeds AND they will start to show your content to people who do not yet follow you.
This largely increases your reach and your visibility, leading to higher brand awareness and loyalty. The more you show yourself to new people, the more likely you are to pick up new clients/customers/consumers as well.
It feels good to have a dedicated following. At some point, they turn into more than a following or an audience. When you create content that is engaging (and inspiring) for people, you’ve created a community of people who support your company and your goals. When you reach that point, it doesn’t mean your work is over, but it does feel good to know your hard work has paid off.
Setting Engagement Goals
In order to get the point of a dedicated following, it’s important to set goals for your engagement. Decide as a team which metrics are most important for you, and determine how you are going to reach them. Make sure you’re setting SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). If you start setting goals too high, you may start to feel discouraged when you’re not meeting them by your set deadline.
Make sure the engagement goals you set, align with your overall social media strategy and any campaigns you are running. Heck, you can build an engagement campaign! If you don’t have a social media strategy, you should start there before you start anywhere else. If you need help with that, I’ve got you covered.
Strategies For Enhancing Engagement
So you have a few goals set to increase engagement, how can you now CREATE the content? What makes social media content engaging?
Compelling content is the almighty foundation of engagement. Without inspiring, educational, passionate content, let’s face it, you have nothing. The content you create should #StopTheScroll. Stop people in their feeds because your content has caught their eye.
In order to create this compelling content, you first have to know who your audience is (or who you want them to be). Take some time to do some research into what types of content they like, learn why they spend time on social media, and figure out where they spend their time on social media (do they prefer Instagram or Facebook?). This is the perfect time to dig into your competitors to see what they’re doing. If they have engaged audiences, maybe there’s a way you can create the same types of content to show that your product/service is better for them. Or, if your competition does not have an engaged audience, you know what NOT to do on social.
A huge component of engaging content is storytelling. Storytelling creates an emotional connection to your audience. Think about it, if your content is relatable, it is way more likely to be shared or commented on.
Other types of content that are engaging are polls, quizzes, contests, and giveaways. Make sure you don’t overdo it with these types of content though, as they can get old to your audience really quickly. For giveaways and contests, always refer to any rules the platforms might have regarding each.
Keeping the Momentum of Engagement
Once you start to build your dedicated following, it’s important to engage back with your audience. Take the time to respond to comments (good or bad), respond to your direct messages, and like the posts people share. Your genuine responses to these interactions are imperative to helping you build great relationships with your audience, which is the key to unlocking a cult-like following.
User Generated Content was briefly mentioned before, but it’s important to encourage this once you have an audience that’s willing. You can encourage it by interacting with and sharing the UGC that’s being shared. Eventually, you might be ready for an influencer marketing strategy!
In conclusion, engagement is an extremely important metric to consider. It directly impacts how your business performs on and off social media. And by understanding that engagement is much deeper than likes and follows, you can tap into your true potential on social media. Not only will you create a larger following, but you will create a dedicated community to love and advocate for you.
I encourage you to take some time to strategize how you can implement more engaging content into your social media strategy. Shoot me an email if you need some ideas!