Getting engagement on your posts is like getting a pat on the back. It shows that not only are people seeing your content but they are interested/entertained by it too. When you aren’t getting engagement though it can feel like all the effort you are putting in is going to waste. You may have figured out by now that social media can be a trial and error game and some posts may do well without you knowing why.
There are a few things you can start doing though that can increase the probability of your social content getting more engagement and this is what we are going to cover in this blog post. These things have been proven to get your audience to take notice of the content that you are spending much time creating and start engaging!
Consistency
Being consistent with your social uploads is tricky to keep up with. You either create content in bulk and schedule it or do it all on the day. Whichever method you use, set yourself a number of posts that you can commit to creating, scheduling and writing each week. For most people, this is 1-2 a week for each platform.
Then it may be worth setting days in which you are going to upload. Make sure to do this on different days for each platform, this ensures that you are being seen as ‘active’ each day of the week. You won’t see results from this straight away but after a few weeks/months you will hopefully see a difference reflected in your followers/engagement rate.
Timing
What time do you tend to publish your social posts? If it is late at night after a long day of work or randomly in the afternoon, this could be the reason you are seeing less engagement. Think about what your audience is going to be doing during the day. Most people have a full-time job which means they are likely to be away from their phones a majority of the day.
Try posting at the following times;
- Between 6-8 in the morning when people are just waking up to get ready for work. They are likely to have 5 – 10 minutes spare to scroll through their social profiles.
- Between 12-2 in the afternoon. Most people will have a lunch break here at some point. They will be looking for some entertainment or to make themselves look busy.
- Between 4-6 in the afternoon. People will, most likely, be finishing work at around these times and again have a bit of spare time on their hands.
- You could also try posting between 9-11 at night for the people that are scrolling through their social media just before they go to sleep.
Posting times will vary for different industries as they will have different audiences but following the times above loosely to see what works best for you is a good place to start. Check out this article where we go into more detail about the best times to post on social media.
Content Types + Optimization
Are you creating a simple square image to post on all your social channels at the same time? It may make your life easier and save you time but it’s not the best way to be encouraging engagement from your followers. You may see improvement once you start treating each channel as a separate audience. Don’t get us wrong, we are guilty of doing this when we are having a busy week. It’s not the worse thing to do for your channel but if you are wondering why you are not seeing a rise in engagement it may be something to look at.
Try optimizing your content for each of your social platforms by posting square images on Instagram and rectangular images for Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn. Canva is a great tool to use when creating content because of its resize feature, which allows you to design once and then just resize it for each platform. Below are the best image sizes for each platform;
Instagram – 1080 x 1080 px
Facebook – 940 x 788 px
Twitter – 1200 x 900 px
LinkedIn – 1200 x 1200
The other thing to change is the type of content you are producing. If you are sharing mostly still images, try creating some video to see how it performs. Platforms like Canva are making it easier to create engaging content with their animate feature, where you can take a still image and move certain aspects, that can catch the eye. Test different forms of content out on your audience and they are likely to show you what they like the best by engaging, or not!
Engagement With Your Audience
If you are wanting engagement from your audience, the best way to encourage it is to engage with them. Try liking, commenting and sharing their posts as well as following them. This will at least increase the traffic to your profile as human curiosity is bound to make them check you out.
As well as this, it can be beneficial to engage with companies that are similar to yours on social media. They are likely to have similar audiences which also may find your content interesting. Their audience may see your comment on your competitor’s post and decide to find out more about you.
So, there are some ways that you can start increasing the amount of engagement you see on your social media. These are not quick fixes and it may take some time for you to see a positive impact on your engagement rate but with some consistency, you’ll see a difference. It’s important to note that different things will work for different profiles, so keep an eye on what is working for you and what’s not. Then you can concentrate on the change that is making the biggest impact for you.