We were delighted that the brilliant Claire Fryer of OnetoThree Marketing Solutions was able to join us as our guest speaker at March’s Get Connected! event! Claire has also captured her talk on how to increase social media engagement in a blog post below, which she has kindly allowed us to share. Thank you Claire!
************************************************************************
Now, more than ever, communicating with our customers online, via our social channels, is crucial. Social media is far from perfect but as we are being advised against social contact, for the time being, it will become a life line for our businesses.
This blog outlines some ways of increasing your engagement on your social media channels.
First of all – what is engagement?
Engagement is something of a ‘holy grail’ for social media! Engagement means likes, comments and shares on your posts – an active action from one of your followers.
Reach is something often talked about – reach is the number of times your post is seen. So not acted upon, just seen.
What is a good engagement rate?
This is an interesting one!
For Facebook:
- 0.5 – 0.99% is considered average
- 1% and over is considered good
For Instagram:
- 1-3.5% is considered good
- 3.6-6% is considered high
- 6+% is amazing!
These figures are small aren’t they? Don’t let small numbers discourage you! Having less followers but followers of the right type is better.
Tips for increasing engagement on Instagram
- Use stories! They are a very engaging part of Instagram and a place to share your personality. Click here to find a full guide to using Instagram stories
- Video – embrace video as much as possible. Don’t be scared of it – our blog features various guides to help you – read them here. Videos are a great way to build engagement and share ‘you’ with your audience.
- Repost – sharing posts on Instagram is a way to interact with others and build relationships. This in turn builds engagement. You have to use a third party app. Once downloaded it’s a process that takes a minute.
- Hashtags are a way of getting involved in other people’s conversations. http://best-hashtags.com is a great website to research which hashtags you should be using.
Tips for increasing engagement on Facebook
- Ask questions! Use Facebook’s poll function – this is a great way to get talking to your fans and have some fun.
- Groups are HUGE on Facebook. Finding geographical groups, industry specific, lifestyle led – you could suddenly have access to thousands of members. Engage with them – share links to your page and get to know others.
- Go LIVE! Be present on your page with ‘the real you’. I am a believer that your authentic voice needs to come through as much as possible and there’s not better way to do this than going live! Simple select the ‘live’ button at the top of your page.
- Post less! Less is more with Facebook. Don’t feel the pressure to keep posting and slogging away to get engagement – this will saturate your audience. Give your content more thought, ask questions and give the post room to breathe. Your engagement will grow.
************************************************************************
Thank you again to Claire and One to Three Marketing for these great tips on how to increase social media engagement!