10 exclusive tips to increase your engagement rates on social media

“The Rock” has 266 million followers on Instagram and more than 5 million likes per post and you only have 1000? Really? If you don’t have his biceps, you may need to find other ways to engage with your audience. 

You’re stuck with 1000 followers and can’t reach your objectives? Your engagement rate is too low? The audience doesn’t engage much? We got you. Those are signals that you should review your social media strategy to boost your engagement rate and increase your followers.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or want to review your existing strategy, here are some free tips that might help you do so.

Understanding your engagement rate

The engagement rate is an essential social media metrics that help you measure the level of interaction between your content and your followers. It includes your followers’ post reactions, likes and comments, shares, saves, direct messages, click-through… In a nutshell: every kind of interaction between you and your audience. To calculate it:  (total engagement total followers) 100

Why should you care about your engagement rate? It is one of the most relevant metrics when evaluating the performance of your social media strategy. It can help you compare the activeness of your audience on each of your channels of communication or compare your performance to the average social media engagement rate.

10 EXCLUSIVE TIPS TO INCREASE YOUR engagement rate

#1. Define clear goals

There is probably a social media strategy for every business and guess why? Because every company has different expectations regarding their social media platforms. Do you want to double or triple your engagement rates? On which social media do you wish to engage more audience? What budget are you willing to allocate to reach your objective? 

Let’s get a clear overview of the average engagement rate of 3 of the biggest social media platforms: 

• Facebook: with 2.85 billion monthly active users in 2021, Facebook is the broadest networking platform, but the engagement rate is not that high. According to Hootsuite, the average engagement rate for a Facebook post is 0.18%.
  
  
• Instagram: depending on the industry, the Instagram engagement rate for posting can vary a lot, but according to Digital Marketing Community Report, the average engagement rate falls at 1.22%.
  
  
• TikTok became one of the most popular social media apps in 2020… and marketers did not miss that opportunity. The average engagement organic rate is higher than in other platforms. It ranges between 3% to 9% (Infinite Institute).

Note that the figures should be taken carefully. Engagement rates vary a lot depending on your audience and your industry. For instance, take a look at this range of engagement rates on Instagram and TikTok:

Source: https://influencermarketinghub.com/influencer-marketing-benchmark-report-2020/ 

Choose the platform that matches your objectives the best!

#2. Analyse your
audience preferences

Your engagement rate strategy depends not only on your audience size but also your followers' social media habits. By analyzing your audience, you are able to understand their needs and customize your content according to their expectations. 

For instance, if you used to display two types of posts on Instagram: carousels and basic posts; analyze both posts’ engagement rates. Maybe your audience prefers to interact with your carousels? Perhaps they prefer to interact with you on TikTok more than on Instagram? 

To make a consistent analysis of your social media performance: 

• Analyze your engagement rate separately for each platform
  
  
• Analyze your rates separately for each type of post.

#3. FOLLOW THE TRENDS!

Perhaps this sounds obvious to you, but your audience will not spare you if you don’t go the right way. To grow your engagement rate, we advise you to follow the different social media trends. Here are some blog posts that should help you get your audience engaged:

• 2021 Instagram trends
  
  
• The 2021 top Facebook trends 
  
  
• Trends TikTok creators better know in 2021 

#4 Innovate, constantly

Innovating can look quite contradictory to our last point… but it’s not! Be the creator that starts a trend. To get your audience engaged, analyze your different post types, remove the less performant ones from your strategy and replace them with innovative format and content. 

Think about how you could diversify your content: 

• Posts polls, quizzes on stories to encourage your followers' engagement
  
  
• Use every kind of format to test their engagement rates
  
  
• Make benchmarks of the different posts you could try on each platform. 

Each platform has different post formats that engage a slightly different audience with different results. Make sure that you do not miss opportunities!

#5 Be reactive and proactive

You can’t increase your engagement rates on social media if you don’t try hard on community management. To stay proactive, you should respond quickly and in a humanized way. 

Guess what? People prefer to receive “Hey Laurene, I can relate to your issue, I’ve faced it myself. You should try to refresh your page. Tell me if it works for you!” than a link to your Q&A website page.

#6 Redirect your existing
audience to your social media

Do you know who you’re posting for? How to attract them on your pages? 

To increase your chances of engaging your audience, don’t forget to redirect your website users and newsletter readers to your social media. Cross-channel often helps for increasing engagement.

#7. Promote User-Generated-Content

What’s User-Generated-Content (UGC)? It’s any type of content that’s promoted by people rather than brands. Posting UGC content on your social media platforms shows how authentic your content is.

According to EveryoneSocial Report, Millennials are 50% more likely to trust UGC content than brand content. Don’t neglect trust in human relationships. They are key indicators that influence people’s opinions about brands. If your audience feels positive about your brand, they’ll be more likely to interact with you!

#8. Combine CRO and copywriting,
use CTA

Engagement goes with interaction and action. To have people interact with your business through social media, make sure that they know how they can reach you. Ask them to answer your stories, allow them to comment on your posts or DM you. 

Work on your CTAs with CRO methodology: learn more onimproving your copywriting with CRO. 

#9. Work with influencers

Influence is all over social media. There are so many reasons you should try influence marketing but here is the main one: partnering with influencers help you increase your engagement as you can reach a different audience. If your audience is rather limited, trying influencer marketing could boost your engagement rates. Watch how the number of followers your influencer have can impact your engagement rates:

Source: https://later.com/blog/instagram-influencer-marketing/#why 

Be careful: micro-influencers are better for increasing engagement while famous influencers help you grow your visibility. Depending on your objectives, you won’t be asking for the same influencers to partner with your brand!

#10 Measure, analyse, optimize, repeat

Last and not least. Don’t lose heart! You won’t achieve a 5x increase in your engagement rate in a week. Analyze the results of your different campaigns and make the relevant changes. Repeat this operation over and over.

A never ending-process

Increasing your engagement rates on social media is a never-ending process. It helps you develop your visibility on the platforms and relationships with your audience. You should start with these 10 tips! 

If you have tried these tips and want to give us your feedback, we’d be glad to hear from you and help you improve your strategy.