Last Updated On: May 26th, 2020

How can you increase social media engagement?

Why should your brand care about engagement?

Well, social media has evolved as an important communication channel for brands.

90% of marketers consider social media marketing to be important to their overall marketing strategy. In fact, 78% of them admit that it has been the most effective marketing channel for their brands.

A majority of brands leverage social media to promote their products and services. However, many underestimate the value of engagement.

If you’re on social media, one of your biggest goals should be to increase your social media engagement.

Why is this?

Because you can’t drive conversions and sales without engagement. An engaged following is an audience who knows, likes, and trusts your brand. It can help fuel your sales funnel.

If you feel like your audience isn’t engaged enough, it’s probably time to review your social media engagement strategy.

So, how can you increase engagement on social media?

Read on to find out:

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Disclosure: Please note that a few of the links in this article are actually affiliate links. This means that if you click on them, I will get a commission, without any extra cost to you. So, feel free to check these out as I only recommend products or services that I personally tested and highly recommend. For more information, please read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.

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How to Increase Social Media Engagement Across Various Platforms

Ever wondered why you post seemingly good content on social media but get little engagement?

Well, you are not alone.

Many brands see very little engagement on their social media posts and they don’t know why.

But you can always improve your social engagement.

The following ten strategies will help you increase engagement across social platforms.

#1. Use Wit and Humor

People use social media to be entertained; not to be sold to.

If all of your social media posts are overly promotional and inviting people to buy your products, you might end up losing your audience’s attention.

Instead, use humor regularly in your posts to entertain your followers and increase social media engagement.

How do you do this?

Come up with witty puns related to your industry. You can also accompany images with honest, relatable captions.

Chipotle does a great job of infusing humor into their tweets. Their tweets aren’t overly promotional about their products.

Instead, they use relatable humor, which can sometimes be self-deprecating, but funny nonetheless. Their tone is casual, and in tune with the teen and young adult generation.

And as you can see in the screenshot below, their tweets get plenty of engagement.

#2. Create Original and Engaging Visuals

According to Wishpond, the average Facebook post gets 120% less engagement than posts that include an image.

So if you want to increase social media engagement, you need to post more images. It could be photos, memes, GIFs, or even original graphics.

You can use tools like PixTeller, Piktochart, and Canva to create unique visuals that will engage your social media audience.

PixTeller has numerous templates and personalized designs you can choose. You can also choose to create your images from scratch. Their design editor also allows you to customize your visuals using shapes, photos, text, colors, and more.

There are endless possibilities of visuals you can create for social media.

If you want to promote your latest research findings or a post with interesting facts, turn some useful points into infographics. You can then share the infographic on social media with a link to the complete study, or post in your blog.

Or you can also create an image that promotes a contest or event. You can also create visuals to promote an upcoming product launch, or to celebrate a milestone.

Taco Bell promotes its YouTube videos through Facebook. But instead of simply posting the video with a video preview, they include a relevant photo in the post to engage their audience.

Another example is how Samsung uses original images to promote its product unboxing.

As you can see in the screenshot below, they’ve created a unique graphic to promote their #UnboxYourPhone event. The image has a subtle outline of the phone, the brand and product name, and the time and venue of the event.

#3. Create More Video Content

Original graphics and images are an excellent way to increase social media engagement on Twitter and Facebook.

But on visual platforms like Instagram, you’re already posting eye-catching images to engage your followers.

So how can you increase engagement on this platform too?

The key is to create and/or post more videos. While you regularly post images, videos bring a refreshing change to your usual content.

GoPro uses Instagram to regularly post images taken using their cameras. Besides regular photos, they also post videos every now and then. These videos tend to get more likes than photos.

If you go through their profile, you’ll notice that many of their photo posts get somewhere between 100,000 to 300,000 likes on average.

On the other hand, their video posts generate more than 400,000 views. Many of their videos, like the one in the screenshot below, even generate 500,000 views or more.

This suggests that posting engaging videos is one of the best ways to increase engagement on Instagram.

You can implement this tactic on other social media channels as well.

But how do you ensure that your videos stand out on these channels?

Use the best keywords, titles, descriptions, and tags. Doing this can help you not only rank well, but get your videos discovered in search.

A tool like vidIQ for example, helps you maximize the organic reach of your videos on YouTube. Their SEO tool helps you find the best keywords for your content based on YouTube search trends and Big Data analysis.

vidIQ’s Audit tool also helps you understand what works so that you can optimize your videos. You can also track competitors and leverage their tactics to make your video content stand out.

#4. Schedule Your Posts for the Right Timing

Social media users aren’t online all the time. If you happen to post something while most of your followers are inactive, you could potentially lose out on engagement opportunities.

So how do you increase your social media engagement?

Find out when your followers are most likely to be online and then schedule your posts accordingly. The goal is to have them see your posts and possibly like, comment, and/or share the posts.

The best times to post can differ according to many factors, such as time zone and target demographic. But it can also differ according to the social media channels you’re using. So you might have to run a few tests to see which timing works best for you on different platforms.

HubSpot‘s social tool helps you gather data around times of the day when you generate the most engagement. You can then review published posts with the highest clicks and interactions to see what time and date you posted.

These statistics can help you determine what day and time works best. HubSpot also allows you to set up a custom publishing schedule so that you can get your content to your audience at the right time.

According to an analysis of 16 studies by CoSchedule, Facebook posts tend to drive the most engagement between 1 PM and 4 PM on the weekends.

As for tweets, your best bet to increase engagement on Twitter is to post them around 12-3 PM during the workweek.

On the other hand, Instagram users are engaged throughout the week with the most active hours being 8-9 AM.

This data proves that you’ll need to create different posting schedules to increase social media engagement on each platform. You can check out the full CoSchedule post to find out the best post timings for other channels like LinkedIn and Pinterest.

#5. Start Using Trending Hashtags

Based on how you use them, hashtags can dramatically increase social media engagement.

While your posts may already reach your existing followers, hashtags help you engage people who aren’t already following you. When you use relevant and trending hashtags in your Twitter and Instagram posts, you improve the chances of users finding your content.

You can use tools like HashtagsforLikes to find trending hashtags in the relevant niche. Their software helps you find quality and relevant hashtags that can help you increase awareness, reach, and engagement.

HashtagsforLikes also offers insights and analytics to help you generate smart hashtags in minutes.

You can use Hashtagify.me to stay updated with the latest hashtag trends.

This research will help you participate in trending social media conversations. And it makes it easier for relevant users to discover your content, which can help increase social media engagement.

For example, there may be seasonally trending hashtags such as #halloween, #spring, #christmas, #thanksgiving, etc. And if you create seasonally relevant posts, you can use these hashtags to engage users.

See how ASOS uses a relevant hashtag to celebrate the first day of spring with their Instagram post below.

What’s more?

You can also start your own hashtag trend. Come up with a unique, branded hashtag, and encourage customers to create relevant posts using said hashtag.

You could offer them something in exchange, such as a chance to be featured, or a chance to win something. The goal is to get the hashtag to trend so that other users who aren’t already within your follower base can discover you.

If your hashtag becomes a trend, it can help you increase social media engagement significantly.

#6. Host a Giveaway Contest

Another excellent way to increase social media engagement is by hosting a giveaway contest. This tactic drives engagement mainly because people have a chance of receiving something. It could compel them to engage with brand or influencer content on social media.

And the best part?

You could boost the amount of user-generated content for your brand based on how you execute the contest.

For example, you can require participants to share their photos using a unique branded hashtag that will create more UGC.

By hosting a giveaway contest, you’ll increase social media engagement among your existing followers.

How?

You may require them to like the post, and tag their friends in the comments in order to participate.

Or in the case of Facebook, you could encourage them to share the post if they wish to participate. And if your contest rules require that people follow your brand or like your page, you could even increase your following.

You can also leverage a tool like VYPER to run an online competition or giveaway on social media. It has numerous tools you can use to plan, create, and execute a viral social campaign.

VYPER’s contests enable you to incentivize people to like, follow, or share your content on social platforms. Doing this can help you increase social media engagement.

Watch brand, Kapten and Son regularly hosts a contest every Thursday. The contest provides customers a chance to win a $50 gift card, which they can use to purchase the brand’s products.

All participants have to do is to create their own Instagram posts using the hashtag #bekapten, and also watch the brand’s Instagram story. This helps the brand increase social media engagement, and also encourages the creation of unique content by users.

GameSeek also hosts giveaway contests on a regular basis. They make the contest entries available on both their website and their Facebook page.

As you can see in the screenshot below, people can participate by liking the GameSeek Facebook page, along with the post, and then leave a comment. They also invite participants to share the post with their friends, which can also help increase engagement on Facebook.

#7. Enrich Your Content with Influencer Content

Social media influencers have achieved an influential status because of their ability to increase social media engagement. They are excellent content creators, and they know what their audiences want.

So, how can you leverage them for increased engagement?

Make the most of their influence by getting them to enrich your social media content. This could encourage their followers to engage with your brand and content. It could also provide existing followers with refreshing content that differs from your usual posts.

How do you do that?

There are a number of ways to have influencers enrich your social media content.

For instance, you could host an influencer takeover in which select influencers take over your social media account for a day. This is most popular with Instagram and Snapchat, and can increase social media engagement significantly.

You could also feature influencer content on your own social media profiles. Or post a video in which you interview influencers.

Artist Couture, for example, regularly posts Instagram photos in which influencers create a look using their products. The following post shows makeup influencer Kimberly Margarita using the brand’s diamond glow powder to create a surreal, fairytale look.

In addition to this, they occasionally invite relevant influencers to take over their Snapchat, and provide fans with beauty tutorials. They announce the takeover through Instagram, and invite fans to stay tuned.

#8. Feature Fans and Customers

One of the most effective ways to increase social media engagement is to feature your customers and turn them into brand advocates. When you share user-generated content on social media, you achieve a few benefits.

First of all, you’re providing followers with proof that your existing customers love your products. And you’re also winning the loyalty of the fans whose posts you share by making them feel appreciated.

Want to increase social media engagement even more?

Well, combine this with a unique branded hashtag. Encourage customers to share photos where they’re using the product and include the hashtag in their description. You can also offer them a chance to be featured in your social media in exchange for their reciprocity.

Five Guys uses Twitter to feature photos of their patrons, declaring them, “Five Guys Fanatics.” They also regularly retweet fan-posted photos that feature food from Five Guys.

#9. Go Live

With the introduction of Instagram Live and Facebook Live, brands have new options to increase social media engagement. You can make the most of these options to engage fans on a real-time basis.

How can you do this?

Try live streaming your launch event, a milestone celebration, or an industry event. Or you could also go live on a weekly basis to update and entertain your social media followers.

You could even live stream the creation and brainstorming process of your upcoming product launch to build hype.

For example, The CrossFit Games live-streamed the announcement of Open Workout 17.5 on Facebook. They then shared the live video afterward, so people who missed it could still view it.

The video received 19,000+ likes and generated around 6,300 comments. On top of this, more than 2,300 people shared the video.

This helped them reach thousands of people and increase social media engagement.



But before you live stream, make sure you give your followers a heads up. The CrossFit Games kept posting reminders about the event so their followers could tune in when they actually went live.

#10. Promote Attractive Offers

You don’t always need to come up with out-of-the-box strategies to increase social media engagement. Sometimes, it’s best to use tried and tested techniques to engage customers and prospects.

One such way to engage your audience is to provide them with attractive offers. You can offer:

Instant discount coupons

Free shipping/delivery

Freebies

Membership at a reasonable cost

Cashback

Such offers can help you increase social media engagement as well as sales.

You should experiment with different types of offers to figure out what your customers respond to best. However, you need to make sure that the offers you create don’t eat into your margins.

Facebook makes it easy to promote offers with its “offer ad” feature. The social network allows your fans to redeem offers online or save them to be redeemed in-store.

Facebook’s Help Center provides you with a few tips to create a successful offer ad:

You should offer substantial discounts of at least 20% off or offer freebies to reach more people.

If you want to engage more people, you should use photos of people using your product. They perform better than product photos and logos.

You should set a reasonable expiration date for your offers. 7 days is a good length.

You can pin your offer ad to the top of your page to increase its reach and engagement.

Ready to Increase Social Media Engagement?

These are ten of the most effective ways to increase social media engagement. If you’re not yet implementing any of these tactics, make sure you start including them in your strategy to increase social media engagement.

If you’re already driving some engagement using a few of these tips, try implementing the other tactics highlighted in this post.

Do you have any questions about executing some of these tactics? Feel free to ask them in the comments below.

And don’t forget – you can always reach out to me for a more hands-on guide to improve your social media strategy.

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Disclosure: Please note that a few of the links in this article are actually affiliate links. This means that if you click on them, I will get a commission, without any extra cost to you. So, feel free to check these out as I only recommend products or services that I personally tested and highly recommend. For more information, please read my affiliate disclosure in my privacy policy.