How To Measure & Increase Social Media Engagement

Jun 29, 2020 8 min read

"The time you dedicate to connect with people on social will lead to increased customer loyalty, higher sales & better reviews."

Engagement today matters way more than just the number of likes.

Thoughtful social media engagement presets an incredible opportunity for brands looking to create a more wholesome presence online & drive more sales.

In this blog, we'll help you increase social media engagement,

understand how to measure it & check out the best ways to manage social media engagement.

You can jump to any section or keep scrolling.

What Does Social Media Engagement Means & Is It Really Important?

Everyone recognizes the importance of social media engagement; they just don't have a good definition.

No one has pinpointed what it means, and there is a reason!

Although it is quite critical, engagement on social media is quite messy & complicated since it targets the relationship between customers & brands.

So What Is Social Media Engagement?

From a consumer standpoint, it is the ability to reach out to and get a response from a company.

For instance, if I run into some issues with my order on eBay. I go to Twitter to ask a question to (@AskeBay), I want to get a response.

 Ebay responds to customers on Twitter

That pretty much sums up engagement on social media.

The actions (comments, mentions, replies, etc.) may vary from network to network, but ultimately it boils down to an interaction someone has with your social media content.

Importance Of Social Media Engagement

Let's break down the importance of engagement into quick goals & interpretable actions.

Boost Customer Relationships

Communication between businesses and customers is now a two-way street, enabling customers to engage with their favorite brands in entirely new ways.

Whenever customers reach out to your brand on social, you're given an incredible opportunity to build new relationships by getting to know them better.

Responding instantly to their queries, appropriately acknowledging feedbacks, and going above & beyond to offer fantastic customer service on social helps you boost customer relationships.

Develop Customer Loyalty

More often than not, customers will reach out when they're in need. Offering a quick and helpful customer experience will go a long way in increasing your customer loyalty.

It improves customer's trust in your brand since you were there when they needed help, where they needed help.

Solving all their issues, expressing gratitude, and even having quirky conversations with them will help you develop & increase customer loyalty for your brand.

Boost Sales

If you're out there, responding to customer queries all the time, it will instill a sense of confidence & trust in your customers.

They'll now be more willing to purchase through your store.

Also, it doesn't matter if you're getting negative or hateful comments; if you address them quickly & resolve them, you'll still end up with an increase in your sales.

Quick Tip: Don't go all salesman in your comment section; try genuinely connecting with your customers & sales with come naturally.

How To Measure Engagement On Social Media?

Now that we're clear on the definition of social media engagement, it's essential to know how you can correctly measure engagement on your social channels.

Luckily, most social media platforms come with a dashboard that lays out the necessary data.

However, if you're managing multiple social profiles on different networks & running several ad campaigns.

You can benefit from a tool like Statusbrew that offers all the information you need in an easy to understand format. Take a look at Statusbrew's reporting capabilities.

 Measure social media engagement with Statusbrew

Here are all the metrics you'll have to keep track of to measure the engagement rate on your social.

We'll start by listing the basics first.

  • Likes, Shares & Comments: This instantly gives a sense of your post's performance on social media.

  • Audience Growth/Rate of Followers: The Next steps is to pay attention to how fast you're getting new followers.

  • Following vs. Followers Ratio: If you have 100 followers, but you're following 400 people, this might appear desperate. Keep a balance between the number of followers you have versus the number of people you're following.

  • Active Fans: Keep track of the number of people who actively interact with your business on social. Keep interacting & watch the percentage of active fans rise.

Here are some more advanced ones.

  • Organic vs. Paid Results: It's highly essential to keep track of the ROI when running a PPC (pay per click) campaign to see whether you should re-invest in it or now.

  • Clicks Per Post: If you're sharing clickable content on social, it is crucial to track the number of clicks you get.

  • Lead Generation: Track the number of people that visit your website from your social media accounts. You can use UTM parameters for better tracking.

  • Audience Demographics: Although generally ignored, these demographics are crucial since they help you paint a picture of your target market.

  • Audience Mentions: Not paying attention to what is being said about your business can be seriously harmful to your business in the long run.

Respond to comments, questions, or criticisms whenever possible.

You can also use a social media listening tool to understand audience sentiment beyond your feed. Take a look at Statusbrew's Listening solutions.

8 Ways To Quickly Increase Social Media Engagement

Here are some tips that'll help you amplify engagement on social media.

1. You Need To Post Engagement Worthy Content

This tip might sound redundant, but hear me out.

You need to put out content that drives a response from your audience. How?

Start sharing content your audience can relate to, it can be a Twitter poll, a Facebook contest, a funny meme, an inspiring video.

 Post engaging content

You can choose to participate in sensitive and ongoing topics but avoid sharing content that'll make people angry at your brand.

AEIOU engagement strategy can be a good way to start.

  1. (A)sk questions
  2. Invoke (E)xpression
  3. Provide (I)ncentives
  4. Make (O)ffers
  5. Deliver (U)tility

2. You Need To Respond to All Comments

If you get a lot of comments on your social media posts, you're given an opportunity to talk to them. Be it a positive or negative comment; you need to address each customer.

 Reply to comments on social

Acknowledge all the positive comments & quickly respond to the negative ones with a solution.

If your posts & ad posts are bombarded with all kinds of spam, negative & troll comments, you can automatically hide them by using Statusbrew's Rule Engine

Avoid replying to comments that are not directly engaging with you (such as comments that have people tagging their friends).

3. You Need To Build A Community

Building a community of people interested in your brand is an excellent way to increase social media engagement.

Facebook groups are the Step 1 to creating a community on social.

Facebook groups give your audience a more open channel to post their queries anytime they want.

Since it brings people with similar interests together, people can freely communicate with each other and have healthy discussions around your brand.

Make a point to actively participate & moderate the group posts to avoid spam and irrelevant posts. You'll have to make sure the group remains valuable to your audience.

4. You Need To Run Contests and Giveaways

The quickest way to go viral and increase your social media engagement is to host giveaways & run contests.

Create a contest that requires people to take actions such as visiting your website or a particular landing page.

You can also host contests where people need to create some content with your product in focus (create a custom hashtag to measure the traction).

Use tools like Rafflecopter to create & manage different types of giveaways on social.

5. Go Above and Beyond in Your Interactions

Almost daily, we come across a brand that's gone viral on social thanks to a witty response.

If you regularly offer a fun and enjoyable customer experience on your pages, you'll increase social media engagement.

6. Post Consistently & Multiple Times Daily

If you wish to increase your social media following & social media engagement, you'll have to post consistently & multiple times throughout the day.

3-4 posts per platform per day is a good par value.

Also, to get the best response on your posts, you'll need to know the best times to post on social media. We've written an entire article on it, check it out: Best Times To Post On Social Media Based On Research

Avoid posting too much, as it may result in people unfollowing.

7. Use The Power Of Videos

Videos are being loved by everyone on social media these days.

The number of videos being created on Instagram & Facebook is doubling over the last few years.

Social media platforms are also heavily promoting video content. To take full advantage of this push, you'll have to start posting video content on your social media handles.

8. Use Omnichannel Marketing

If you want to increase your social media engagement rates, you cannot rely on one platform alone.

You'll have to take the benefits of omnichannel marketing.

With omnichannel marketing, you can take advantage of all of your marketing efforts to draw in more users to your social media content.

But how do you get started with omnichannel marketing?

We have written an entire article that helps you explain the meaning of omnichannel marketing and actionable insights on how to integrate it with your business.

Is There A Better, Faster Way To Manage & Measure Engagement?

If you choose to actively respond to queries, hide comments, & measure the results of your engagement efforts.

You're gonna either end up spending all your time on it or miss out on conversations every now & then.

You need a platform that allows you to manage & measure everything in the best way possible in the least time.

And Statusbrew does that.

Statusbrew's Engage inbox brings conversations about your brand from all the social accounts into one place.

 Statusbrew Engage Inbox

You can now respond to each customer query faster, automatically hide/delete spam comments & manage engagement as a team.

You can also measure all the above mentioned engagement metrics and even keep track of the performance on your customer support agents.

Also, did we tell you that you can claim your free 7 day trial for Statusbrew when you sign up for social media engagement?

Explore Statusbrew!

Statusbrew is a social media engagement tool that supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, and even Google My Business.!

Shivam Devgan

Marketing Manager @ Statusbrew

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