4 Tips for Successful Community Engagement on Social Media
By: Natalie Just
For the last two years, I have been a digital creator on Instagram focusing on fashion and lifestyle related content. I grew my account from 5k to over 40k followers in less than a year with a consistent engagement rate of over 10%. While my metrics might differ from a huge brand’s, the steps that I took to achieve this type of community and engagement can be followed by any person or business! I’ve laid out my top 4 tips on how to achieve this kind of engagement below, but first, let’s talk about what engagement is and how to calculate it.
How to calculate your social media engagement rate
Your engagement rate can differ based off each platform, but the general formula for Instagram engagement is:
Total Likes (past 7 days) + Total Comments (past 7 days) + Total saves (past 7 days) / Total number of followers = Engagement rate
Social media engagement includes likes, follows, comments, direct messages, emails, hashtags and more!
For Facebook and Twitter, you can switch out “total saves” for total shares or ret-tweets. It is important to calculate your engagement weekly, or at the very least, monthly because it will give you the most accurate estimate of your current engagement rate.
Why is engagement so important for social media community managers?
When trying to grow your account it’s not enough to simply want more followers. More followers may look impressive, but it will mean nothing if your content is not getting any interaction from your followers. The industry calls this a “fan-following” and does not help with engagement. “Experienced social media marketers know though fan growth doesn't matter if your audience isn't consuming your content” (Escobedo). To put it simply, if you have 100k followers and you post a picture and it receives barely any likes, your audience has barely any value to your platform.
You might be thinking to yourself, “hey, that’s not my fault people don’t feel like commenting on our posts!” I hate to break it to you, but it kind of is your fault. Instagram and Facebook’s algorithms work similarly in the sense that they want to promote content on people's feeds that provide some type of value. In order to have valuable content that is worth engaging with, make sure your content is one or more of these three things:
Educational
Inspirational
Entertaining
On top of this, you want to make sure your content is related to your business and created specifically for your target audience. For example, if you want to start targeting your marketing efforts to Gen Z, do research on Instagram and TikTok trends and apply them to your content. As long as you follow these concepts and trends, you will be able to target your ideal audience. But how do we get them to stay and engage? This is where my 4 tips come into play.
#1 Ask your Audience a Question
The best way to get a response from your audience is to ask them what their opinion is on your product or service. For example, you can post a carousel post of two to three different images of your product in different colors. If you are a clothing company, you can post the same sweater in 3 colors and ask your audience which color they’d like best for the spring collection! Asking questions within your post caption and comments section is great, but another fun way to do this is utilizing your story features. You can post the Q&A box for your audience to ask questions about your brand or give feedback! You can also utilize the poll and quiz features to get their opinions as well!
#2 Keep Direct Message Options Open
This tip is pretty self-explanatory, but it is important to review whether or not your DM options are set to “friends only” or “everyone”. While spam messages are annoying and inevitable, allowing anyone who doesn’t follow you to DM you is beneficial because you can begin to have genuine conversations with them that can lead to them being a loyal follower! Monitoring and replying to messages is a key rule increasing engagement and building loyalty. This goes for emails and phone numbers as well! If you have either of those listed on your page, you want to be sure you check them frequently and get back to your customers at an appropriate time.
#3 Go Live!
Going live on Facebook or Instagram can seem intimidating, but if you have the event pre-planned, your time live should go according to plan! I suggest only going live for special events, but the main three topics should be the same as above: something that inspires, educates or entertains!
#4 Creating Ads and Promotions for your Exact Target Audience
To ensure that your profile is being engaged with by your target audience, make sure you run specific ads with them in mind. Facebook and Instagram allow you to be very specific in regard to who these boosted posts are seen by. Define the exact person you would like to reach and watch your audience grow from a “fan following” into a group of engaged and loyal individuals.
There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to managing a social media account. Content creation is so important but community managers need to be on their game when it comes to working with creators to know exactly what kind of content needs to be created. On top of defining the kind of content that needs to be created, engagement needs to be monitored and measured. Like what was said before, a community that provides zero likes provides zero value. So, community managers and creators need to work together in order to make content that is worth engaging with! To do this, make sure your content is either educational, inspirational, or entertaining. And, in addition, follow the 4 tips laid out above and you should see a significant increase in engagement from your community.
Like what you read? Here’s more related content!
5 Ways to Increase Your Instagram Story Engagement
Instagram Influencer Marketing 101: How to Find the Best Influencer for your Business
The Best Practices for Social Media Photography
Social Media Content Strategies for 2021
Nahai, N. (2017). Webs of influence: The psychology of online persuasion. Pearson Education Limited.
https://www.emarketer.com/content/understanding-customer-engagement
https://buffer.com/library/social-media-engagement/
https://www.adweek.com/performance-marketing/how-instagram-analytics-can-help-boost-roi-in-2019/#:~:text=There's%20no%20hard%2Dand%2Dfast,will%20give%20you%20a%20percentage.