How To Make Social Media Posts More Interactive For Higher Engagement

Two things will likely happen when you see a super-long, cluttered post or caption on social media.

One, you quickly scroll past, or two, you expend more energy trying to make sense of the post. As a result, you might feel unfulfilled. Why? There is no interaction, engagement, or delight. Worse yet, said post becomes unmemorable.

In this article, you’ll learn how to make social media posts more interactive and get those engagement rates up!

Table Of Contents

• 2 Ways To Make Social Media Posts More Interactive
• 5 Factors Affecting Social Media Post Interactions
• 8 Tips To Make Social Media Posts More Interactive
• 3 Examples Of Social Media Posts That Are Interactive
• In Closing
• FAQs

You can directly jump to a section of your choice or keep scrolling.

2 Ways To Make Social Media Posts More Interactive

You can make social media posts interactive in either one of two ways.

1. You can use a traditional post but incorporate some interactive elements to elicit a response from your audience.
2. Another way is to use interactive content like quizzes, polls, and interactive infographics.

Social media posts that are interactive are content pieces designed to spark engagement between the audience and a content creator’s post. They come in different formats and require active audience engagement in real-time to count as a success.

5 Factors Affecting Social Media Post Interactions

The factors affecting social post-interaction are multifaceted. They include the audience's perception of your post and how it appeals to them. These factors include:

1. Timing & Post Frequency

The frequency and timing of social media posts can impact their interaction.

Several factors, like your industry, the social platform, and the audience’s time zone, come into play. Posting at the right time when your target audience is most active on social media can increase the likelihood of engagement. Similarly, posting too frequently or infrequently can affect how users interact with your posts.

2. Quality Of Content

High-quality content can significantly impact user engagement. Your audience expects you to develop quality content ideas. Mediocre content won’t perform well in terms of engagement on any marketing platform.

You can use generative AI to help you create high-quality content. Make sure your content also includes high-quality visuals such as images, videos, and infographics.

3. Post Relevancy

You should aim to create content your audiences are looking for. That’s why it’s important to determine what your audience wants first before you go about creating content.

4. Use Of Relevant Hashtags On Specific Platforms

On social media, hashtags are important for reach, brand growth, visibility, and impressions. Using relevant hashtags puts you in front of your target audience, resulting in a 12.6 percent, increase in engagement compared to those without.

That said, building a hashtag strategy for social largely depends on the platform. For example, you could get more reach using hashtags on Instagram than on LinkedIn.

Why? The Instagram algorithm actively pushes posts with niche-relevant hashtags to non-followers on the Explore page, allowing them to find you. That’s why users on the platform can follow these hashtags without following the creators using them — it helps to train their algorithm on things they like to see.

By contrast, the Linkedin algorithm works a little differently in that posts without hashtags perform well so long as you have a good following.

For example, this LinkedIn post has no hashtags but has 400 comments and over 40 reposts.

While you can follow and pin hashtags on LinkedIn, it more or less functions as an organizing tool, not a reach tool. Conversely, Twitter picks up relevant words in a tweet even without the ‘#’ tag.

Knowing how the hashtag algorithm works will help you develop a better hashtag strategy for interactive social media posts.

But knowing how the hashtag algorithm works isn’t enough. You should also know which specific hashtags will help increase your visibility for higher engagement.

5. Social Media Algorithms

Social media algorithms play a significant role in helping you achieve user engagement, content visibility, and reach. But the extent to which this happens differs from platform to platform.

On Instagram, for instance, the algorithm puts a premium on hashtags when determining reach. So, hashtags help boost your Instagram likes, comments and even follows.

But on Twitter, your feed is influenced more by your interests and the interests of those you follow.

Understanding the intricacies of your preferred social platform algorithm allows you to optimize your content accordingly.

8 Tips To Make Social Media Posts More Interactive

Before you create any content, you must have a goal in mind. Do you just want to increase engagement or maybe gather insights? Your answer to this question will inform your content creation process.

That said, here are 8 simple ways you can make your social media posts, in particular, interactive for higher engagement:

1. Use Visuals

Visuals such as images, infographics, videos, and GIFs are more likely to catch users' attention and encourage them to interact with your social media posts. They help to paint a picture and appeal to the audience's emotions.

Whole Foods, a food company, used visuals to start a conversation:

A Venngage study found 80% of businesses will heavily rely on visual content for their marketing strategy. However, be sure to use high-quality visuals that complement your content.

2. Ask Questions

Asking the right open-ended questions can spark discussions. You can even get people to share their opinions on your products, services, or industry. Use this feedback to shape your next content.

You can also use questions to get people interested in your new website content and prompt an action from them. This is an effective strategy to implement right after you start a blog in your niche. It can help make your blog known.

See how Superpath uses questions to get people to click on its blog post link.

Food Network follows the same strategy:

The question even gave the audience room to discuss other food ideas for the upcoming week.

3. Use, Polls, Surveys and Quizzes

In polls, surveys, and quizzes, you ask questions, too. However, instead of your users responding in the comments section, they interact with your post directly by clicking on the answer.

Surveys and polls are effective interactive content tools for getting feedback from your audience. They help you obtain insights into their mindsets and opinions, which is useful for adjusting your content marketing strategy. You can also find hidden consumer pain points to address while boosting the engagement rate.

Instagram Stories, Twitter, and Facebook have polling features that you can use. Like in this example below, Netflix used a Twitter poll to ask if they’d like another season of the hit movie: Stranger Things.

As you can see, the post raked in nearly 500,000 votes!

Quizzes, meanwhile, can expose the competitive nature of your audience and draw attention to your brand. They can also help you segment your audience according to their interests and know what types of content they respond to.

4. Host Contests & Giveaways

Social media contests and giveaways are a great way to engage followers and encourage interaction. Your audience may be happy to engage with you if there’s something in it for them.

You can ask them to like, comment, and tag friends on your social media content in exchange for incentives.

Sephora, a beauty company, did this.

This type of content doesn’t just make your social media posts more interactive. It also improves brand and product awareness.

5. Share User Generated Content

Sharing user-generated content (UGC) such as testimonials, reviews, and customer stories doesn’t only increase engagement. It also helps you promote your brand. Besides, campaigns with UGC have 29% higher conversion rates than campaigns that don’t use it.

You can ask your loyal customers to post product reviews that you can repost. Here's how Glossier did it.

You may also ask customers to share their experiences, feedback, or success stories and feature them in your social media posts.

6. Use Emojis

Emojis add personality and emotion to your content. They, in turn, can grab your audience's attention and get them to interact.

NASCAR, a car racing company, used emojis to raise awareness for their competition's playoffs

Using emojis to represent each driver was an effective method to get people talking.

7. Interactive Calculators

Providing your audience with interactive calculators such as budget planners, savings calculators, or health trackers can increase their interaction with your social media content.

You can’t publish your interactive calculator directly on your post. What you can do is write a social media post teaser. Then direct your audience to a link to the interactive content on your website.

Check out Third Love’s Fit Finder calculator. It helps women find the perfect bra that fits them according to size, comfort, and style.

The audience answers some questions, and the calculator provides recommendations that could lead to conversions. It’s a win-win for everybody.

For this strategy to work, though, you need high-speed hosting solutions. You wouldn’t want your page to load slowly when your audience gets to your website from your social media post. They might just end up leaving. Your brand reputation could be negatively affected, too.

8. Offer Incentives

Offering incentives such as freebies, discounts, and store credit can encourage your audience to engage with your social media posts.

Depending on the campaign, you may offer incentives for liking, sharing, commenting, or tagging others in your posts to boost engagement and drive user interaction.

However, ensure your incentives are enough to motivate the audience to act. Announce incentives that will also translate into a benefit for your brand if users avail of them.

For instance, you can offer a 25% discount on a user’s next meal in your restaurant. They can avail of this if they get 100 real people to like the post they shared on their own social media accounts. If a user reaches the required likes, they’ll still have to dine in your restaurant to avail of the 25% discount. So, that still translates into profit for you.

3 Examples Of Social Media Posts That Are Interactive

The following examples will show you how social media posts that are interactive have boosted engagement for different brands.

1. Dell’s Polls

LinkedIn has a poll feature that allows you to ask their opinions on various topics.

This is a post type that Dell, a computer manufacturing company, uses.

Polls are an effective method for gathering information about your audience and what they think about you. The feedback you receive can help you improve your products and services. In our example, Dell was also able to identify trends in its industry.

Nikon’s Photography and Videography Challenges

Nikon's annual Photo Contest provides amateurs and professionals with a chance to showcase their talents. They provide photo and short film entry requirements, and winners receive cash prizes.

Nikon also posts photographs and films of notable contestants and winners on their multiple social media accounts to give them recognition.

This contest generates a lot of engagements across their social accounts, boosting their brand awareness.

Disney’s Engaging Questions

As part of their social media strategy, Disney uses engaging questions to entertain their audience across social media channels.

Like the one below, they sometimes post a picture of a movie scene and ask you to guess which movie it is.

You can also use interactive content like quizzes to ask your question instead of just publishing it as a traditional post.

In Closing

Social media interaction is crucial for your brand. They help you build relationships, boost brand visibility, and even gather insights. By considering factors such as timing, content quality, content relevance, hashtags, and social media algorithms, you can influence the level of interaction in every social media post.

From this article, you also learned some tips on how to make your social media posts more interactive. You can either incorporate interactive elements into your traditional post or use interactive content.

Use visuals, ask questions, and host contests and giveaways. You can also use polls, surveys, and quizzes. Don’t forget to share user-generated content to elicit engagement. Use emojis and incorporate interactive calculators as well. Another option is to offer incentives. Just make sure your incentives are enough to get people to engage with your social media posts in the first place.

Implement these tips and techniques to make social media posts more interactive and boost your brand's online presence.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you make a social media post interactive?

You can make a social media post interactive by using interactive content like quizzes and polls. You can also use an ordinary post and incorporate interactive elements to get people to interact with your content. You can host giveaways or contests or post visuals and ask questions, for example.

How often should you post on social media?

It depends on the social media platform you want to post on and when your audience is online. But generally, 1-2 posts a day is ideal.

How do you measure the success of my social media post?

The following key performance indicators measure your posts' success;

Engagement: Likes, comments, and shares show how much your audience interacts with your social media account.

Reach: This metric shows the potential unique viewers your content could have.

Impressions: This is the number of times your post shows up in your audience timeline or feed.