By Boost Social Managing Director
Elisha Fiorentino
For so long now counting the likes on post and the number of followers were the main ways of determining social media success. But things have changed. Social media is not a popularity contest, it’s about creating relationships (hence the word social!) and there are more ways to measure performance than simply likes and your fan base.
Insights for your Instagram and Facebook are much more diverse than new followers and clicking like, love, care, wow or angry emojis. Your business needs to drill down and look at these performance indicators.
1) DM messages
2) Story views
3) Interactions on stickers
4) Comments
5) Saves to favourites (or for reading later)
It’s only when we come to grips with these metrics can we truly understand your social media engagement and appreciate the performance of your brand online.
Why is engagement so important?
Two years ago, updates to the Facebook algorithm meant that personal posts would get more reach than brand posts in followers’ news feeds. It was thought the age organic reach was dead, however meaningful engagement such as insightful comments (not just an emoji or tagging a friend), a share or save signals to Facebook and Instagram that the content is popular. In basic terms, this increases the amount of people who will see it, allowing your post to show up across more news feeds.
Social media engagement in 2021 is more important than ever. With so many brands fighting to be seen, it’s crucial to create content that encourages your followers to interact. We’re sharing with you 6 ways you can up your social media engagement to stay relevant for the year ahead.
1. Ask Me Anything
Using Instagram story stickers can be a great way to get conversation started. Questions from your followers can inspire new posts that can be repurposed as blog posts. For example; You might get asked, “I hate the look of my Instagram feed, what can I do to make it look better?” From that you could do Instagram stories on using a professional photographer, how to create themes and the pros and cons of using stocks photos.
Perhaps you’re a cabinetmaker like Rositano Kitchens and Joinery. You could ask your followers what colour kitchens they like. It can spark conversations on what’s trending in kitchen colour palettes. Is it better to go white or bright?
There are so many options available with stickers including the countdown sticker for events or product launches and polls
2. Think about what makes you stop and comment on a post
Today, admittedly we are all getting lazier. Once upon a time to win competitions, we’d fill in coupons and go to the post office, buy a stamp and send it off in the hope of winning. These days, unless you all you have to do is enter your details, it all seems a bit too hard. We are all time-poor and have attention spans shorter than goldfish.
The same enthusiasm for entering competitions by snail mail has now infiltrated the way we comment online. Sheesh if it’s any harder than clicking one or two buttons most people can’t be bothered. Think about the way you use social media. Admittedly most people tend to scroll, scroll, scroll and now and again, you’ll come across a post that stirs you emotionally that you can’t help but comment. Try and tap into the last social media post that wasn’t a friend that you commented on publicly. What was it about that post that made you take the time to express your opinion? Was it an amazing image? Was it another user’s comments that you disagreed with?
3. Create content people want to save
By creating content that people tap to comeback to later, this also tells Facebook and Instagram bots that it’s quality content. It could be an interesting tip on marketing strategies to help boost your social media engagement or a motivational quote that speaks to the heart of your followers. Perhaps if you’re a restaurant or cafe owner, you could share the ingredients to a ‘secret’ recipe or meal hacks to make cooking faster and quicker. Builders and cabinet makers could share inspo photos for outdoor kitchens. There are immeasurable ways to create content people want to refer to later down the track.
4. Experiment with different types of content
Social media isn’t a one size fits all type of medium. Don’t be scared to get your creative on and experiment with different types of posts. You can always use Instagram and Facebook stories to test the response before adding them into your news feed. If you always post salesy posts with products, try switching it up with testimonials and funny quotes about being a shopaholic.
Try out short video formats, making Instagram Reels and infographics. If you’re always deadly serious, don’t forget to try and have some fun.
5. Discover your light-hearted side
There’s no reason you can’t have a little fun on social media, so long as it fits into your brand’s theme. Try using short videos of your team telling 3 facts about themselves, however, one must be a lie and get your followers to guess which is not true. Use AR filters, make hilarious TikTok videos or create your own memes. This gives your brand a personality! And let people know you’re not just a brand, there’s a human behind it.
6. Revisit your hashtags
Hashtags are the only way of indexing content on Instagram, so if you’re not hashtagging your posts with up to 30 relevant hashtags, you’re only really doing a disservice to your brand.
Many companies only use 11 hashtags and think that it looks too spammy with more than 10 or 11, but it’s not about looks. Instagram wouldn’t allow you to use 30 if they didn’t serve a purpose. And don’t waste your time going back and deleting hashtags either, because that means your photos are no longer discoverable unless people are on your feed. Not to mention, it takes valuable time when you could be creating killer content.
When choosing hashtags, try to avoid using the mega hashtags that have more than 1 million posts, otherwise, your content is just going to get lost amongst the hundreds of other people using the same hashtag.
If you are thinking this all sounds great, but you simply don’t have the time, then there’s a solution for that too. For help with ideas or someone just to run your social media for you, so you can get on with concentrating on your business, then feel free to reach out, or explore the social media packages we offer at Boost Social.
