You spend hours on copy and design to get a social post ready to be engaged and connected with. You check your engagement hours later only to find one of the most frustrating parts of social media – there’s no engagement. It’s a hard pill to swallow because not only is it costly, but you may also be disheartened by the lack of engagement. That’s why we put together a step-by-step guide you can use to connect with your audience in a way that will open up conversations, build relationships, and ultimately drive your business.

But What Is Social Engagement? Why Does It Matter?

Social media engagement is how many people interact with your content. For example, engagement can include metrics like: comments, favorites, shares, or mentions. It’s a great way to measure if your content is actually something your audience wants. The more compelling the content, the more likely your posts will get more reach. By building these positive, thoughtful relationships with your audience, you can ultimately impact your bottom line.

You may be posting great content but getting low engagement or you may be lucky and getting great engagement metrics. But there’s no maximum when it comes to engagement – there’s always room for improvement.

The Rockstarr Guide to Increasing Engagement on Social Media

1. Analyze Your Current Engagement

One of the first steps will be analyzing your current engagement, so you know where you’re starting from. Check out how many followers you currently have, comments, shares, and whatever metrics are important to you. Track these numbers regularly to see if your strategy is working.

2. Choose Your Strategy

Because there’s no one size fits all when it comes to developing a social media marketing strategy, this step will take some time. Think about your brand, your marketing goals, your industry, and what you have to offer. Once you better understand your strategy, you can identify the right channels.

3. Know Your Audience

Your content will depend on your audience. It won’t make sense to use emojis and slang when your audience is older. Understanding your audience will guide you in deciding what platforms to use, when to publish, the type of content, and your voice. You’ll increase your reach simply by knowing your audience and the best times to schedule your posts.

4. Create Valuable Content

Here is where you really start thinking and developing great content that engages conversation. Don’t simply broadcast to them because social media is not a one-way street. Build a trusting relationship by becoming a valuable resource for content that they need and addresses their pain points. You may have to experiment, analyze, tweak, and then repeat to find your winning formula.

5. Be Smart With Your Hashtags and Stay on Top of Trends

Don’t know what to post? Check out trending topics and hashtags. But, be smart because you don’t want to appear like you’re joining in the conversation for clout. Using hashtags appropriately can double your engagement rate.

6. Encourage Sharing and Conversations

Being proactive and reactive is important when trying to open up conversation and keep it going. Be reactive and respond to your direct messages, comments, and mentions. Be proactive and engage in conversation about you, but haven’t mentioned you directly. Instead they could’ve used common nicknames or misspelled your name. Make sure to use tags when mentioning people to inspire an engaged community.

7. Write Strong, Eye-Catching Headlines

Encourage your followers to click on a link by making the headline catchy and emotional. Keep it simple and stay away from industry-speak because you want it to be accessible to everyone. Test headlines in tools that can score how strong they are. How to, list, and question headlines tend to get the most engagement.

8. Visuals! Visuals! Visuals!

Posts that have relevant images or videos get 94% more views than content that does not have images at all. Whenever possible, use video – it’s the most engaging type of content, regardless of social media platform. Facebook users alone watch 100 million hours of video every single day. Also, to keep things fresh for your audience, update your profile photos regularly.

9. Always Listen and Respond Quickly When Appropriate

The expectation of people is that once they post on social media, the response should be immediate. Responding quickly to people can increase customer satisfaction and save you the time and money of having them call into your customer service line. Our tip is to have a customer service guidebook ready filled with pre-composed answers to common questions you receive. Even though it seems contradictory to showing your human side, it’ll help you in the long run so you don’t have to waste time chasing down answers.

10. Show Your Human Side

People want to know that there’s a real life human on the other side. It could be as simple as signing off on your posts, or responding to people in a human way.

Remember to measure the engagement so you know what works and what doesn’t. It’ll also help you prove the ROI on your social media strategy and identify the trends that increase engagement. The result will fuel your sales and is a great way to build a community of life-long fans of your brand.