3 Top tips on how to improve your social media engagement

As you know, social media is a competitive, overcrowded space. During the past year especially, more and more people have been using social media to connect with others, keep up with the news and make purchase decisions, no matter how bizarre your lockdown purchases were!

As a paid social agency, we’re well versed in all things social media, and have a couple of tips up our sleeves.

With around 3.2 billion users worldwide, breaking through the noise is no easy task. As a business, you may find yourself spending time and money creating amazing, informative content for your social media channels, but, unfortunately, this doesn’t guarantee engagement.  If this sounds familiar, It may be time to switch up your organic social media strategy.

1. Learn from others

If you’re struggling for ideas on how to improve your engagement, there’s nothing wrong with spying on your competitors and big players in your industry. 

Visit their social channels and take a look at the kind of content they’re posting and what’s working well with their audience. 

Not only can you get new content ideas, but you can also see how their audience responds to their content. 

Are there any questions that keep occurring in their comment sections? How are they responding to negative feedback? Can you spot any opportunities they have missed?

All of this information can be brought into your social strategy to help you to create content and engage in a way that you know will land well with your intended audience. That isn’t to say you should copy their strategy and ideas completely. To stand out, you need to be different enough from your competitors that people will notice you and remember your content. Simply take inspiration from their successes and apply it, making it relevant to your audience and business.

2. Keep the conversation flowing

The number one rule in organic social media is to communicate with your audience! People trust people more than they trust faceless, corporate brands. Building relationships with your followers is more important than ever. You may not have the manpower to spend hours a day interacting with your audience, but replying to people’s comments, commenting on their posts and answering DM’s will all go a very long way when improving your engagement.

Greggs are a great example of a brand that always responds to their customers. Whether it’s a complaint or a lighthearted response, they keep they rarely leave a response unmanaged. In turn, people trust them as a brand and feel like they can engage with their social channels.

As well as responding to your audience, it’s important to reach out, especially if you’re a smaller or relatively new business. Find people who follow similar businesses and interact with their posts, follow them and leave comments. By reaching out and engaging with a new audience, you are more likely to gain more followers and higher engagement on your posts. Social media is exactly that, it’s social, and a lot of businesses forget that! 

3. Listen to your audience

The final tip is to pay attention to your audience! Following on from the last point, conversation and communication is key for driving engagement on social media, but that doesn’t mean you should just be talking, you need to be listening too!

No one likes a brand that just talks about their brand, it’s important to understand what is going on in your followers’ lives. What are their likes and dislikes? Is there anything happening that could be affecting them?  Or anything happening within your industry that is important to your customers? 

Knowing what’s important to your audience is key to your social media success. Missguided have a strong understanding of their followers and use it to generate conversation and content that lands. Posting content that isn’t all about their product has proved successful in driving engagement and building strong customer loyalty.

As well as creating good content, listening to your customers is great for improving your business. If you notice a particular query or complaint that keeps occurring on social media regarding your business, not only can you address it, but you can also learn from it and improve your business in the long run!

There are a number of things you can do to improve your social media engagement. The new year brings with it a great opportunity to switch up your style and grow your business! If you need any advice or help on managing your social channels, get in touch today!