Earth is not the only place where people live; the internet is too. The internet is another human habitation and social media is where we interact. In recent years, the number of online stores has increased rapidly. And as people interact in traditional brick-and-mortar shops, in the same manner, they interact with businesses via social media.
For those running an e-commerce business or anyone who is considering building an online store, social media engagement an important metric. In this guide, you will understand the benefits of social media engagement, how you can increase social media engagement, and build a loyal customer base accordingly.
What Is Social Media Engagement?
Social media engagement is how you make meaningful connections with new and existing customers. It is the measurement of likes, comments, and shares on your business’s social media platforms. The greatest treasure of an e-commerce store or any business is the quality of the audience. An engaged audience base is more valuable than hundreds of non-engaged followers. Social media engagement is measured by a range of metrics including:
· Likes
· Comments
· Shares
· Retweets
· Click-throughs
· Utilizing branded hashtags
· Followers and audience growth
· Mentions – tagged or untagged
In simple terms, social media engagement is a metric for calculating the responses of your visitors or audience each time you post an image, a GIF photo, a podcast, or a video.
Benefits of Social Media Engagement
While many marketers focus on getting new customers and driving sales, they neglect the most important aspect, which is social media engagement. Of course, these things (sales and traffic) do matter; however, engaging your followers or fans on social media can turn them into customers. Social media engagement comes with a lot of benefits, which includes:
- Strengthening your customer relationships
- Building customer loyalty
- Increasing your sales
- Earning higher positive reviews
- Making an impact in the market – for modern brands with a solid online presence
Increase Social Media Engagement Quickly in 10 Steps
Before we proceed, you must know that social media engagement doesn’t stop at posting on your social media accounts. It involves several different steps that you are familiar with. Want to learn how to increase social media engagement in 2020, pay attention to the following tricks.
1. Analyze your engagement
Scalability matters a lot in any business. The first step to take in engaging your audience on social media is to note down the current number of followers that you have, the average number of shares, likes, and comments per posts, and other meaningful data. After listing out, ensure that you keep track of this data so you’d know when your engagement effort starts to pay off. Use social media analytics for this task; it helps you save time and provides accurate information.
2. Select your strategy
Every business has a strategy that works for it. Your job is to discover yours. First, you need to know what motivates your audience and synchronize it with your company’s goal to achieve a desirable result. After this discovery, create tweets and social posts that will engage your followers.
3. Create and share valuable content
Content is king; it has always been. After getting a metric of those following you, you want to provide helpful and informational content to them. The mistake many marketers make is that they always post promotional content on social media. This is super wrong. Your audience will only share posts that will address their present challenges or ones that they seem will be valuable for their friends and family. For instance, dare your followers to post their best anniversary footwear, instead of uploading a collection of footwear for sale. You can even create #hashtags boost engagement.
4. Post multiple times daily
To win the engagement game, you must post an average of 2-3 social media posts every day. This is non-negotiable as your followers will be eagerly anticipating your next post. Avoid posting less often, it will not yield substantial results. Avoid posting excessively, your follows may find it annoying and will unfollow you. While posting multiple times daily is effective, knowing when to post is also recommended. Regardless of your location, the best time to post on social media is between 1-3 pm.
5. Keep the conversation flowing
The goal is to get responses from your audience not to let them off after reading. It is all about giving and taking. No one is an island. So, ensure to ignite a conversation by answering direct messages, responding to comments, and being a little casual in your posts. Make it a habit to ask and answer questions; keeps the conversation going and ensures both reactive engagement and proactive engagement.
6. Use images in every post
Images are attention-grabbing tools that command user engagement up-to 150%. Adding relevant images that describe the content of your post is a great way to increase engagement on social media.
7. Think beyond the likes, comments, and shares
When trying to engage your audience, look beyond the likes, comments, and shares. You should take note of private conversations like DMs (direct messages) and story interactions. This shows that your audience cares about your post. If you are not getting the desired result, make sure you work on those figures too!
8. Emojis work magic!
Not too many marketers know this trick. Emoticons are powerful tools that can be used to increase social media engagement. Try it today! Each emoticon can increase likes, comments, and shares by a different amount. Research shows that a grimacing emoticon can boost interaction by 138%, whereas a smiley face can increase engagement by 25%.
9. Ask Questions
Asking questions occasionally can help you increase interactions on social media. Sometimes, you can ask funny questions, other times, you want to ask relevant questions. For instance, if you own a T-shirt dropshipping store, you can ask "who likes grey tees?" This not only advertises your product but it can also engage your fans.
10. Schedule smarter
Posting frequently is important but it can be overwhelming most times. To be consistent with this task, you need a smart scheduling tool. Scheduling tools help to keep your content active on social media platforms and also ensures that you post at the right time every day. There are tons of scheduling tools out there but Hootsuite is easy to use and intuitive.
8 Best Practices to Increase Social Media Engagement
1. Keep response times speedy;
2. Optimize your headlines for engagement;
3. Respond to all comments;
4. Start a Facebook group;
5. Encourage readers to comment, like, and share;
6. Run giveaways and contests;
7. Host weekly Twitter chat;
8. Use two attention-grabbing words at the start of a post.
Call to Action
With this guide, just anyone can increase the social media engagement rate for his or her brand. Remember, different tricks are effective for different niches and platform. Discover what works for your brand and put it to trial. Try these tricks for free today and start getting more likes, comments, and shares on your social media engagement posts.
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