In this article we look at what engagement is and why it is useful to monitor it after you have posted your content on social.
Have you ever thought of doing this by relying on a social media agency or social media marketing consultant?
If you have a Social profile or page you know how complicated and difficult it is to increase user interactions, what is referred to in the jargon as social engagement.
Increasing interactions means increasing channel visibility and, consequently, business opportunities.
What is engagement, what it is for and why it is important for your social strategy.
Engagement meaning…
“The term engagement comes from English and means “involvement”, meaning the ability to succeed in getting someone interested in something and leading them to take an action to demonstrate it.
Creating engagement means creating strong bonds. Creating ties form improves loyalty, increases word of mouth and brand authority.”
If you are reading this article you probably typed one of these keywords:
- how to create engagement on instagram
- create engagement on facebook
- what is engagement
How to create Engagement through a social strategy
As we know, Social Media are networks through which people have the opportunity to interact, inform themselves, create and maintain connections.
It therefore turns out to be crucial for a company to be there and to be able to engage its audience
The success of the message shared with the audience is intended to create strong “bonds” between the brand and its fans, eventually converting them into Customers.
But this should not be the only purpose.
It is essential to create a relationship of trust such that users are stimulated to recommend the brand to their friends through word of mouth. We can define it as one of the most powerful means of viral marketing, and the influencers have made it a profession.
Engagement rate what is it?
It is the indicator that measures the engagement rate of our followers. It allows us to understand how well we were able to engage fans through our fanpage, or through our Instagram profile, for example.
Measuring engagement is important because it allows us to understand how effective and efficient our social strategy is and, why not, to refine and/or improve it as appropriate.
There are several ways to calculate engagement rate, even specific software.
If you don’t want to invest time and money in sophisticated online programs, the following are two formulas for calculating engagement rate on Facebook:
It is the indicator that measures the engagement rate of our followers. It allows us to understand how well we were able to engage fans through our fanpage, or through our Instagram profile, for example.
Measuring engagement is important because it allows us to understand how effective and efficient our social strategy is and, why not, to refine and/or improve it as appropriate.
There are several ways to calculate engagement rate, even specific software.
If you don’t want to invest time and money in sophisticated online programs, the following are two formulas for calculating engagement rate on Facebook:
- Eng. Rate = [(Number of Likes + Number of Shares + Number of Comments) : (Number of Fans)] x 100
This formula is probably the most popular and takes into account the data as a whole, indicating what is the average interaction of our fans. However, it does not take into account the number of content on the page at all. It can be useful for estimating the engagement of the posts we have published on a given day. - Eng. Rate = [(Number of Likes + Number of Shares + Number of Comments) : (Number of Fans)] : [(Number of Posts Published)] x100
The variant of the previous formula that also takes into account the number of posts published in the period under consideration.
Don’t be surprised if your engagement rate is low-it is usually normal. Here are some numbers that will help you understand your engagement rate:
- Values above 1% indicate a good level of engagement
- Values between 0.5 and 0.99 indicate an average level of engagement
- Values below 0.5 indicate a low level of engagement and therefore to be improved
Remember that the average engagement rate varies by sector and community size.
The level of involvement depends on multiple factors such as:
- Type of content posted: photos, videos, text etc.
- content focus: products or services … or other
- types of interaction provided for each individual post
It is therefore critical to use the right references to measure the engagement rate of your content.
For example, the average engagement rate in the fashion sector is higher than that in the financial or insurance sectors.
Similarly, when a page has a high number of fans (over 10 thousand) it is more difficult to engage the majority of the community.
Based on the calculation of engagement, we can say that: a few good i.e. engaged fans are better than many who are not interested in the brand.
In addition, a low number of interactions, raises the suspicion that, many fans were acquired with online applications and fall into the “fake” category. That is, fake profiles.
A high engagement rate also allows for a reach vast by naturally and spontaneously increasing the total number of fans.
Examples of types of engagement:
- Like the page
- Visitors/Fans who interact with a post (and link) through comment, like and share.
- Fan page tagged
- Posts and photos uploaded by fans spontaneously
- Supply and demand responses
It is also true that each page lives its own story, and not all audiences respond in the same way.
Creating Engagement: 10 useful tips
Step 1. Create successful content
Remember that the real protagonist is not the brand but the Customer.
Content must pique his interest and not be reduced to mere self-promotional messages.
Informa, write content that is useful and not an end in itself or to promoting your Company.
Step 2. Use emotional photos
Be creative, be exciting: get involved!
Reinforce your message with high-impact emotional photos, followed by videos, links and status messages designed specifically to capture users’ attention.
Above all, be clear and concise: in a word…comprehensive!
Item 3. Choose the best time for your publication
There is no universal rule here; each social needs to be managed and analyzed on its own.
Every audience also has its own habits. So test, analyze, retest and reanalyze.
Step 4. Know your target audience
In order to profile a message designed specifically for each type of audience, it is important to communicate but more importantly to know who we are communicating to.
This is why what we call in marketing jargon “buyer persona“.
Basically our ideal user.
Who we want to read the content we publish.
Based on the buyer persona we define the communication style, the graphics, the type of content, the tone with which we write (tone of voice).
Thanks to the buyer persona we publish content in line with our ideal audience greatly increasing the engagement of our page.
Step 5. Communicate often
The importance of a thorough editorial plan, allows us to post on social with a certain frequency and regularity.
This allows us to continuously stimulate the reader’s interest.
We must not forget that on social posts are short-lived.
Step 6. Use #hashtags
The use of #delete on some socials such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram makes it easier to find discussions on the topic of your post.
Thus, they allow users to quickly track down conversations around a given topic and keyword.
Basically, they are search keys.
Thanks to hashtags, users will reach our content more easily, further improving engagement.
Step 7. Stimulate your fans
It means being simple, clear and why not…fun!
Resort to some strategies to arouse interest.
Insert, for example, quotes from famous people, sentences to complete, questions that imply answers from them…
Be original, don’t bore!
Item 8. Organize contest
There are different types: the random drawing, the interactive game, the quiz or questionnaire, etc…
Contests are a solution to increase user engagement and interactions.
For example, stimulating them to like or word-of-mouth.
The same are incentivized to return to our social page.
Item 9. Ask to share
The simple request to share a piece of content, helps to increase engagement.
Step 10. Remove the article link once it has been uploaded in the update.
Your article will still be accessible and the post will look neater.
If there are no images, Facebook, for example, will allow you to upload a photo.
It is important to include an image relevant to the article.
Step 11. Gather comments to create Q&A sessions.
Encouraging the audience to ask questions is a great way to attract them.
This technique works if you specify a theme or topic, set a deadline (to appeal to the sense of haste), and explain how questions will be answered.
Be creative: you could create Q&A sessions with Facebook Live, webinars on external platforms to boost lead generation, or perhaps engage suppliers, colleagues or experts with whom you collaborate.
Obviously, to achieve greater success we recommend that you activate cross-media promotion, thus using the other social channels on which you have a presence with your business.
Step 12. Share an offer and add the Messenger button.
Facebook Messenger BOTs help create conversations by giving automatic responses to standard posts, but that’s not all! They can send special offers to everyone who comments on a particular post.
For example, you could create a generic post explaining that everyone who comments will receive a coupon or voucher via Facebook Messenger.
This technique works if your lead magnet is valuable and you can activate it with one of the many tools available, including ManyChat.
Step 13. Use emoji
Facebook posts that use emoji generally have higher share, comment and reaction rates. Using smilies will help you make your business more “friendly,” thus bringing you closer to the users in your community.
Obviously, to avoid giving an opposite effect, it is necessary to use them sparingly and choose the most representative ones according to the concept you intend to express.
Step 14. Share user-created content
Re-sharing content submitted and/or posted by your fans is a great way to show how much your community and customers matter.
This technique can translate into greater overall engagement, from all those users who will check daily whether or not there has been sharing of their post.
Item 15. Ask open-ended questions
Is there a better technique than asking a question to get someone to talk?
Asking for an opinion or to guess something is a great way to generate engagement, as in the example below.
Creating Engagement: Conclusions
In this article we saw, together what engagement is. Why it is important to create content that is on target with your target audience.
Remember that good content can also generate traffic to your website, further increasing your company’s visibility and business.
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