Ways To Increase Social Media Engagement
Post On Social Media Consistently At The Best Time
Post on social media consistently gives your followers a habit to follow. They know when to expect new content from you, and if you’re creating the right content, they will know they’re going to enjoy what you post and have engagement.
However, there’s a balance. If you post too often, your audience will get annoyed and stop engaging with you. If you post too little, your audience will forget about you, and your organic reach will drop.
CoSchedule pulled data from 14 studies, and found that this is how often you should post on each platform:
- Facebook: 1 post per day
- Twitter: 15 tweets per day
- Pinterest: 11 pins per day
- LinkedIn: 1 post per day
- Google+: 2 posts per day
- Instagram: 1-2 posts per day
And you’re going to get the most engagement whenever your audience is already online. So when is the best time to post on social media?
Best times to post on social media:
- Facebook: Thursday - Friday, 1pm - 4pm
- Twitter: For B2B, Monday - Friday; For B2C, Wednesday and Saturday - Sunday, Anytime
- LinkedIn: Tuesday - Thursday, 10am - 11am
- Pinterest: Saturday, 2am - 4am, 1pm - 4pm, 8pm - 11pm
- Instagram: Monday, 8am - 9am, 2am
- Google+: Monday - Friday, 9am - 11am, 12pm - 1pm
Use Visual Content
One of the most powerful tools you can use to help you increase social media engagement is to incorporate visual content. In general, social media users and consumers are more engaged by visual content than written content increasingly. Incorporate images and videos into your social media posts, and you’ll increase social media engagement. Research has discovered that images can result in an 85% interaction rate on Facebook and increased retweets by 35%.
This is especially true for millennials, who tend to prefer visual content over traditional, written content. Incorporate visual content to align with the preferences of your audience.
And there are endless possibilities of visuals you can create for social media. For example, if you want to promote your latest research findings or a post with interesting facts, turn some useful points into infographics.
Use Emojis
Using emoticons can increase social media engagement. Those who use emoticons in their social media posts tend to see an increase in likes, comments, and shares. And textual communication doesn’t come with clear indications of tone. So you can add a feeling or a prompt to a post, for example, by including emojis that give your readers a hint of what you are feeling.
Many apps allow you to create a library of frequently-used emojis to make it quicker and easier to find your favorites. When you use this method to increase social media engagement, make sure you use it well. Don't add too many, or your post could wind up coming off immature or hard to read. And you should also make sure that emojis fit your content.
Use Trending Hashtags
Hashtags help you engage people who aren’t already following you. Thus hashtags can dramatically increase social media engagement. 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 Twitonomy to find trending hashtags in the relevant niche. Or you can use Hashtagify.me to stay updated with the latest hashtag trends. The 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.
In addition, you could also start your own hashtag trend. Come up with a unique hashtag and encourage customers to create relevant posts using the hashtag. In exchange, you can offer them something. And if your hashtag becomes a trend, it can help you increase social media engagement significantly.
Ask For The Comment, Like, Or Share
When you are working to increase social media engagement, be sure to ask for the comment, like, or share. Studies have shown on Twitter that tweets that end in “Please Retweet” are more likely to be shared. You can also ask people to like, share or to add a comment. People are more likely to share a post if you ask them to.
One of the most effective ways to engage your audience is to make them feel like a part of your page or account. Make them feel valuable and let them be heard. Encourage them to share their opinions about your posts. It also means you have to actively participate and include them in the discussions.
5 Social Media Engagement Tools
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Photo editing:
Canva makes it easy to crop pictures to the exact specifications of different networks. What's more, you can also edit photos directly in the Hootsuite compose box and add text and filters to them.
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GIFs:
Giphy: Type in a keyword like "excitement" or "dog" and you’ll quickly find a batch of amazing animated GIFs that can add some entertainment to any engagement.
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Analytics:
Hootsuite Insights: Best tool for getting a general overview of your engagement efforts and reporting on specific keywords or topics.
Brandwatch: Create in-depth reports that capture the entire social conversation around your brand and industry.
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Collaboration:
Google Hangouts: This can help you keep in contact with the rest of the company and you can get a heads up about real-time events that could potentially be great engagement opportunities like conferences.