10 Important Tips For Getting Better Social Media Engagement

Saurabh Patil           27 march 2023

What is social media engagement?

Social media engagement is a broad term for actions that reflect and measure how much your audience engages with your content. Social media engagement can include likes, comments and shares, but varies by platform.

For example, on Facebook, engagement means all possible ways of interacting with a Page’s posts and profile, messages and mentions, all added together.

Engagement can be divided up into different areas:

• Interaction with your Page: call-to-action button clicks, profile clicks any tab clicks

• Interaction with your posts: comments, likes, shares

• Interaction in direct messaging: messaging a Page or responding to a message

• Interaction with other Pages: mentions of your Page, commenting on other Pages’ posts

Tips for increasing your social media engagement

1. Know where to find engagement metrics

Most foremost social media networks like Twitter, Instagram and TikTok allow you to view your engagement metrics on their native analytics. These native dashboards allow you to see engagements including likes, comments, shares, impressions and more.

You can also use third-party social media management tools like Sprout Social to help you view and understand your engagement metrics in one place.

For example, you can see what posts accomplished the best by profile.

2. Set goals and define metrics

It’s important to understand the various social media metrics and what they mean on each platform. This is because your social media goals determine which metrics you use. For every goal, you need a related metric, which will determine if your social strategy is working or not.

Set clear engagement goals so you know what to focus your content efforts on. If you want more engagement on your posts, then you know you’ll need to focus on creating interesting content. The metrics that tie with it will be post engagement specific: how many people interacted with your posts and what types of engagement did they execute?

3. Understand your platform

Each platform has its own metrics, trends and culture, so you must adjust your social media engagement strategy to accommodate each network’s nuances.

There are over 15 social media platforms that brands are using, but this doesn’t mean you should join each one. Do your research and consider which social media apps are the best for your business and your audience.

4. Know your audience

The key to improving your social media engagement is understanding your target audience—the group of people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

For example, if you’re a B2B company, LinkedIn could be the best fit since it focuses on professional networking and many B2B brands are already active on the platform.

Your brand is making content for your audience, so always keep them in mind, from deciding what content to create to determining the best times to post on social media.

5. Understand the components of an engaging post

Every network is a little different in terms of engaging posts but similarities still stand out.

We also found that consumers looking for authentic posts like customer testimonials that highlight a brands’ product or service.

Pay attention to what content does well on each platform and consider if it could resonate well with your audience. Check your own analytics to identify if and how these types of posts perform with your audience. There’s a swath of social media ideas to try out or get inspiration from, so don’t be afraid to get creative.

6. Create shareable content

You might be familiar with the phrase, “Don’t forget to like, comment and share,” but there are many other ways to increase your social media shares outside of explicitly asking.

For example, visual content like short-form video and images are more likely to be shared, so consider leaning into making more posts that feature either, or both.

If you create shareable content, your social media engagement will increase. People on social media enjoy sharing posts they enjoy, admire or find valuable, so create and curate content that will prompt your followers to hit the share button.

7. Know when to post on social media

Knowing the best time to post on social media is another key to increasing your engagement. Identifying what is the best time to post based on your platform and audience will help you determine when to prioritize upcoming posts.

Knowing how often to post on social media is equally important because you don’t want to flood your audience with too much content. You want to hit a sweet spot that allows you to maintain an active social media presence. The sweet spot is about 1-2 posts per day for brands.

8. Execute your strategy

Our last social media engagement tip is straightforward: execute your strategy. Get into the habit of testing, iterating and experimenting with your social media marketing strategy. Social media is ever-changing, so your strategy needs to evolve over the year as well.