Tips for Boosting Engagement

Content is king, but engagement is key. If you're putting in all the work of posting quality

content, ensure that it's paying off and promoting engagement to grow your brand awareness and social accounts. Below are nine tips that you can start implementing today to boost social media engagement, and the five biggest mistakes on social media to ruin engagement.

1. Carousel Posts Carousel posts can be used to educate, inspire, and promote your brand to your audience. If you give followers something to scroll through, they are going to spend more time looking at it, and are more likely to engage with the post.

2. Stories With Interactions Give followers an easy, mindless opportunity to engage with a poll, link, or question in your story post. These promote engagement, build connection, and should provide value. Examples) Link your brand website or affiliate link. Take a poll on brand-relevant topic. Ask followers a question for recommendations.

3. Reels Reels Reels If you haven't jumped on the Reels train, it's not too late. Even if only posting Reels sometimes, it's better than nothing. This is the best and easiest feature to utilize to quickly increase Reach. Because of increased visibility, Reels also often receive higher engagement compared to static posts.

4. Follow Accounts of Interest Get friendly online and follow other relevant accounts of interest. This will encourage accounts to follow back, help build relationships and resources, and increase visibility. It also shows that your account is more active, which is more attractive to other social media users and favorable to algorithms.

5. Ask Questions Asking questions opens up the dialogue for conversation, inviting comments, responses, and other forms of engagement. Some good ways to do this include following up tips by asking followers for their tips, asking followers to vote between choices, asking for recommendations, or asking general thoughts on a relevant topic.

6. Give Engagement to Get Engagement If you're coasting, you're going downhill. Accounts that coast on auto-pilot are not going to grow. You have to give engagement to get engagement. But it needs to be authentic, not spammy. This means that you should give engagement to your followers, and accounts you follow and truly admire, and discover new accounts that you truly have interest in. Commenting "amazing" on several of their photos, or trying to slide a sales pitch in the inbox or comments section of someone you don't even follow is NOT the way to go.

7. Jump on Trends Jump on trends fast to increase both visibility and engagement. This can be a post topic, a video audio, a video transition, or hashtag. Trends generate an open conversation of sorts, so being part of the conversation is an easy way to invite a connection with other accounts.

8. Track Prime Posting Times Track your prime posting times on social platforms to see when your posts are most likely to get increased Engagement. You can use a tool like Later to do so.

9. Post Daily, or Multiple Days Per Week The more accounts engage with you, the more chances they have to engage with you again. Social media algorithms give users favorable content over chronological content. So posting frequently is important for staying in the algorithms across feeds, followers, explore pages, and more. Also, the more content, the more value. Give followers a reason to stay.

Biggest Mistakes

1. Only Using Automated Services If a social account is only operating on auto-pilot, it may feel spammy and untrustworthy, and it probably means that you're not giving engagement to others. You will likely see your engagement tank. Automated services are great when paired with a social media manager, and social media strategy to keep the account engaging and authentic.

2. Trying to Keep a Low Follower Count Unless you're a household name brand or celebrity, purposely trying to keep a relatively low follower count is probably just going to hurt your account growth. Social Media is meant to be social, and build a community. If you're not actively doing so, it's just going to take longer to form.

3. Using spammy DM or Comment services Do not spam other accounts in the inbox or comments. It's just going to get your account blocked and ruin brand trust.

4. Not Responding to Comments or DMs Take some time to respond to your comments and direct messages as much as possible (within reason) if it's helpful to building your brand and community. You can even set up FAQ and Saved Replies on Instagram to help cut response times and ensure that your brand followers get answers they need. Read how here.

5. Deleting Posts Archive, don't delete. Especially soon after posting, or because you're unhappy with the engagement rate. This messes with the algorithms and can therefore decrease your visibility, Reach, and future engagement.