Engagement is the buzzword on everyone’s lips when talking of content on social media. Unfortunately, it is difficult to get engagement on ones’ content Much of inbound marketing relies on quantitative strategies and analysing data. While engagement, needs a whole other recipe for success. This is because, while there are many techniques, there is no one standard recipe for success. That said, while there aren’t any steadfast solutions, we can study patterns of success.
Always ask questions
Asking your audience, a question is perhaps one of the oldest tricks in the book for increasing reader engagement, but remember, consistency is key. Make a point to include a question in every article, or add a call for comments to your author bio. But it does not necessarily have to end here. The basic idea is to post content that audience will love interacting with. You can catalyse the interaction by asking question, creating a poll, inviting an opinion or even a quiz. This can be posted in the form of an interactive infographics to capture audience attention.
Surprise the Audience
Everyone enjoys a surprise. Immediately, your post will stand out from the others, ensuring it gets more attention and visibility. Some of your audience will feel the need to reward you for the surprise. When this happens, they are likely to leave a comment or share the article on their social media platforms, increasing engagement either way.
Use Video and pictures
Using video will definitely increase your engagement. A study by marketing Sherpa shows people spend 100% more time on pages with video than they will on pages with other media. Why? They are a kind of content that’s easy for people to digest, and generally people will watch the entire video. When it comes to an article, people generally only read the headline, and scan the content if they even decide to read it.
According to Buffer, tweets that include images tend to gain 150% more retweets than tweets that don’t include them. Images capture more attention when scrolling through newsfeeds than just plain text. Adding relevant images to your post will help encourage more social media engagement.
Interact with your audience
People who don’t feel appreciated won’t do anything for you. That’s why it’s important to let your readers to know you appreciate them and the time they take to engage with you and other readers. It’s up to you to determine how you reward them – you can make it as simple as a thank you in reply to their comment or share, or as complex as rewarding them with a discount code of some sort to use in your shop for a limited time… or a random act of kindness gift. The efforts you make, especially if you take the time to get actively involved in the conversations with your readers, will go noticed
Post Multiple Times Daily
To increase social media engagement, you’ll need to post regularly on your pages. On average, 2-3 posts per platform per day will help you build an engaged audience. If you post too much, you may annoy your audience, which can result in an unfollow. You’ll also want to post at the best times.
Optimize Your Headlines for Engagement
Your headlines should be honest yet compelling. Whether you’re trying to drive traffic back to your blog post or product page, you should use a tool like CoSchedule to create a captivating headline. CoSchedule allows you to optimize your headlines to encourage engagement such as click through. You’ll receive a score for your headline and can make changes to increase your score. Aim for a score above 70.
None of these strategies will skyrocket your engagement overnight, but if you consistently practice these, you should see an increase in your engagement over time. You’ll start to see more shares, comments, and participation with your content over time. Use the engagement metrics to determine how effective your content is, and use the feedback to keep improving your content for your audience.
What keeps you engaged with content? Tell me in the comments below.