Four ways to increase engagement on your social channels

It’s no longer enough to simply have a large number of followers on your brand’s social media channels; you need authentic and consistent engagement to get the most value out of your social media marketing campaigns.

After all, engagement rates are one of the best ways to measure the results of your marketing efforts because it’s easy to follow a brand but it takes more time and effort to like/comment/share posts. If you’ve been struggling to boost engagement rates on your social media channels, here are some of the most successful strategies:

Ask questions

Asking questions is a simple but incredibly useful strategy for encouraging people to engage with your brand on social media. It’s thought-provoking, it makes them pause and think about something related to both themselves and your brand/products/services, and it invites them to share their thoughts in the comment section on your post. This is also a valuable opportunity to get qualitative feedback from your followers, so don’t resign your posts to statement-only captions!

Encourage followers to tag a friend

This strategy is helpful for growing your follower and engagement rates. The “tag a friend in the comments” call-to-action is typically deployed with a fun/entertaining post, as opposed to more sales-y posts, which may get less traction on the engagement front because it looks like a brand is trying too hard to boost its own sales.

Use opinion polling

One of the most effective engagement-boosting strategies involves creating a poll with a question and two or more options for audience members to choose from.

For example, a financial services company might post a poll asking if student loan debt or saving for retirement is a greater concern. The results of this hypothetical poll would be useful for determining the relative age and financial concerns/preferences of the company’s followers and increase engagement of the post.

Host a photo contest

Lastly, many brands get great engagement rates when they carefully plan and roll out a photo contest. This is an excellent opportunity to accumulate user-generated content, in addition to building hype for your brand among existing and potential audience members who want to win the grand prize. Many brands partner with influencers and/or other brands to help control the costs of contest prizes, so the sky’s the limit when it comes to creative uses of photo contests for social media.

Offer a giveaway

Make sure to tie entry into the giveaway to not only following your social channel but to leaving comments, tagging friends and sharing the giveaway post.