18 Mar 10 Ways to Increase Your Engagement Rate

A key element to social media success is creating a highly engaged fan base. Let’s face it, there’s no point posting content if your followers aren’t interested in what you have to say.

Engagement refers to the number of shares, likes and comments your social media posts receive. In short, the more your audience are liking, following and sharing your posts on social media, the higher your account engagement!

Here are our top 10 tips for increasing follower engagement 

Listen before you talk – If you want people to engage with your content you first have to figure out what they want to see. If you can provide helpful, informative or entertaining content, people will want to connect with your brand and engage with your content.

You can find this information out via:

• Polls on your stories
• Asking your followers to comment on posts
• Directing them to send you an email or DM (direct message)

Don’t post for the sake of posting – Post content that will make people want to like and share your content. Put yourself in your followers’ shoes and think: am I posting this to make up my post quota for the week? Or do I really think my audience will relate and/or benefit from it?

Post consistently — Frequent posting keeps your brand visible for customers, reminding them that you exist and have something interesting to say. To ensure you don’t fall behind on your posting, why not try scheduling your posts!

Use videos — Videos are a great way to show emotion and tell stories in a way that your photo posts can’t.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to spend a lot of time creating motion picture quality movies for your fans, instead try some fun videos ideas such as:

• You talking to the camera
• Behind the scenes of a certain project
• Q&A’s
• Showing a day in the life.

Be personal — Showing the real people or person behind your brand allows your audience to connect on a more intimate and personal level.

Add a call-to-action –  What do you want your followers to do? Is it to like your post, comment on it or visit your website? Don’t be shy – tell them what you want them to do e.g. “click on the link in my bio, Send me a DM, comment a friend below!”

Ask questions – Learn more about your audience by asking them questions. Chances are you’ll receive a high amount of replies because it’s targeted straight at them and easy for them to get involved.

For example:

• Are you a dog or cat lover?
• Are you an early bird or night owl?
• Are you a summer or winter person?

Reply to everyone – Engage yourself! Like, comment and follow people back.

Consider contests and giveaways — If you are a brand, contests and giveaways are a great way to increase interest in your brand. After all, who doesn’t likes free stuff?

By doing this, you are skyrocketing your engagement through likes, comments AND you are gaining new followers.

Collaborate — Share links and produce original content with other popular brands or pages. This builds credibility and trust as viewers see you are working with other trusted pages. This also gets your profile out there to new audiences.

So now you have our top tips for increasing your account engagement it’s time to get started. If you use these tips let us know in the comments and where we can see your results! P.S. if you’re an influencer with over 5,000 followers and a killer engagement rate (2% and over) we’d love you to sign up to our influencer network here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emma McCoy Lovell is a Food, Heath, and Social Media Enthusiast. Emma is originally from New Zealand but is now based in Melbourne, Australia for a change of lifestyle and opportunity. She is a beginner in her blog writing and has a strong interest in social media along with all its aspects. Her goal is to become a social media expert with skills in blog writing, photography, management and more.