The concept of engagement is of the utmost importance to any organization. For instance, the engagement your audience feels towards your company or brand. It is a factor in all of your marketing efforts, but in this article we focus on how to boost it on your social media channels.
The benefits of engagement
Engagement isn’t the easiest thing to measure. Say, you place a story on Instagram and see that it was viewed by one hundred people—can we then state that these viewers are actually engaged? We can’t look into the heads of our followers, but will have to rely on the digital tracks they leave behind. The rule of thumb here is that the more effort they put into any action, the higher their level of engagement likely is. Simply liking a message is easily done, but writing a reply takes time. Even sharing a post (while not necessarily time-consuming) is a sign of engagement: your content is apparently important to your follower and worthy of being spread.
That is what you want to achieve. An audience that feels connected to your company, your mission, your message. But how to inspire these feelings in people? And how to maintain it, strengthen it?
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Tips for increasing engagement
- Be visual: Visual content draws attention and generates more engagement than text by itself. Experiment with different forms, like images, infographics, carrousels and videos.
- Consistency: Regularly post (high quality) content. You can facilitate this process and even automate it by using a content calendar, planning ahead for postings on all your social media channels. Tip: take a content subscription with us, and we’ll post amazing, daily content in your company’s name.
- Contests: Give followers the opportunity to win prizes. Contests generate excitement and stimulate people to get involved.
- Go live: Live videos on platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer a more personal experience. Use this to communicate with your audience in real time.
- Interaction: In line with that, encourage interaction! Ask questions, listen to feedback, respond to reactions. This is effective, especially if you manage to do this quickly and consistently.
- Measure away: Continuously analyze your results, for instance with Google Analytics. This enables you to find out what types of content are successful. Use these reports and statistics to keep improving your strategy.
Authentic, rather than perfect
Authenticity is something we cherish at Vuurwerk. Staying as close as possible to your true “self”, where that “self” is of course the sum total of your core values and the many aspects of your organization. You can, of course, unleash any number of marketing tricks to boost your social media presence (for instance, paying influencers or posting memes), but if that doesn’t suit you, if the tone isn’t true to who you are, you will lose authenticity. It is better to present yourself as authentically as possible. Even if that means showing some imperfections—which only serves to highlight that there are people at work behind your company logo.
A guaranteed boost to your engagement
By following the tips and insights in this article, you will increase the engagement level of your target audience on social media. Would you like to take it one step further? Get into contact with Vuurwerk; we are experts when it comes to online marketing. Send us a message here.