For modern brands with an online presence, strong social media engagement is a sign that y'all're making an impact in the market.

It's not just about looking popular: it'southward nearly making meaningful connections with current and future customers, which will serve to heave your brand (and ROI) both on and offline.

Read on for the ultimate guide to building, managing, and measuring social media engagement and all its business benefits.

Bonus: Use our free engagement rate calculator to find out your engagement rate four means fast. Calculate it on a post-by-post ground or for an entire campaign — for any social network.

What is social media engagement?

Social media appointment is the measurement of comments, likes, and shares.

Of form y'all want to rack up your followers, but ultimately, the greatest measure of social media success is an engaged audience, not just a big one.

Equally a business, information technology's quality, not just quantity, that you lot should exist striving for.

Imagine you threw a party, and tons of people showed up, but they all just sat there silently. No small talk, no dancing, no conversations, no questionable drinking games. Was the party really a success? The RSVP list looks practiced, sure, but did your guests have fun? Do they like your dip?

Activity and engagement is crucial for every social platform to build a positive brand experience, and develop meaningful relationships with new and potential future customers.

Social media engagement is measured by a range of metrics that could include the following:

  • Shares or retweets
  • Comments
  • Likes
  • Followers and audience growth
  • Click-throughs
  • Mentions (either tagged or untagged)
  • Using branded hashtags

Basically, social media engagement is growing anytime someone interacts with your business relationship and tin can exist calculated in a diverseness of ways. Check out our consummate listing of social media metrics, and how to rail them, here.

How to increase social media engagement

While y'all could just cantankerous your fingers and promise that your followers just commencement spontaneously getting chatty, chances are, they may need a little encouragement.

Luckily, at that place are enough of tricks of the trade to boost that date and get this virtual political party bumpin'.

First, analyze your engagement

It'due south hard to mensurate your growth if you don't know where you lot're starting from.

Put on your data scientist hat (looks great on you) and jot down your electric current number of followers, how many comments and shares you're getting on average per mail, or whatever numbers are meaningful to y'all.

Then make sure to keep tracking regularly and so that you take hold of jumps or dips in appointment that can requite you valuable clues nigh what's working (or, just as importantly, what's not).

These tools for social media analytics can help yous save time getting started.

Select your strategy

Of grade, there'southward no one-size-fits-all solution. Since every company's business goals are different, every visitor's social media strategy volition be too.

Domino's Pizza and Tiffany and Co. are going to take very different motivations for their engagement, and that will drive the content they put out in that location.

Domino's is trying to create a young, fun, and weird brand vox, while Tiffany aims to educate virtually its rich blueprint history: their tweets are both engaging in their own means.

Domino's Pizza and Tiffany and Co Twitter social media strategy

(Source: Dominos Twitter, Tiffany and Co Twitter)

Depending on what suits your brand and what your business has to offer, your social media appointment goals might include:

  • Changing public perception of your make
  • Developing new customer leads
  • Collecting feedback about new products
  • Educating your audience with resources and communication

Know your audience

It's difficult to get people engaged if yous don't actually know who y'all're talking to.

The sort of language, tone, and resource that resonate are probable going to exist dissimilar for a skateboarding company versus a gardening supply shop. (Save for any gnarly grinding grannies out there.)

Check out our guide to conducting audition research to learn everything you demand to know about your target market.

Knowing your audience volition too help you determine:

  • What social media sites to exist on
  • When to publish
  • Blazon of content
  • Brand voice

Create and share valuable content

Now that you know who is following you lot and why you desire to attain them you lot're prepare for the important third 'Due west': what the heck practice I tell them.

Content that is helpful to the audience, that addresses their needs and hurting points, is disquisitional. Think "chat" non "broadcast."

If you're just talking almost how neat your make is, or what you have for sale, it's going to be harder to connect.

For a t-shirt company, posting pics of your latest blueprint volition only get you so far; posting fashion tips for how to dress upward a t-shirt to wearable to a wedding, on the other hand, is offering unique service and wisdom to aid your fans out. (And daring your followers to share their own "wedding tee stories"? Even improve.)

In this Sephora post, the cosmetics company didn't just brag well-nigh their mask selection, they made a game of asking their followers to choose their faves with a #wouldyourather tag.

Time for a piffling game! #WouldYouRather use a clay or gel mask during the hot, summer months? Comment 👇Clay masks:…

Posted by SEPHORA on Thursday, June 25, 2020

In terms of format, it's helpful to empathize which kind of content is best for each platform: artful images for Instagram, longer text posts or videos for Facebook, then on.

That being said, don't be afraid to get creative with these post ideas:

  • Contests
  • Asking questions
  • Polls
  • Encouraging your audience to enquire you questions (try an "Inquire Me Annihilation" session)
  • Test their knowledge
  • Media upload contests
  • Blithe gifs
  • Spotlighting customers
  • Custom stickers or filters for Instagram Stories

Overall, the all-time way to figure out what content is working is to watch and larn. Be a content scientist (another hat, cute!). Experiment, observe the reaction, tweak and repeat.

Stay topical

Non sure what to chat about on whatever given mean solar day? Merely join a chat that's already happening. Commenting on current events and trends in a manner that ties in your make is an opportunity to instantly connect with an audition in a timely style.

Trending pop culture (remember the spring of Tiger Rex?), big sporting events, holidays, or viral memes tin can all exist great excuses for a mail.

Keep the conversation flowing

Some may recall of conversation equally an art, merely in some ways, it's really more of a sport: volleying attention and questions back and forth.

Online, you need that give and take, besides. Information technology'due south important for brands to practice both reactive engagement and proactive date.

When you're reactive, you're answering direct messages, incoming mentions or comments.

When you're proactive, yous're the one sparking chat with people who may be talking about you, but oasis't necessarily sent messages to you directly. Maybe they've mentioned yous with a misspelled brand name ("I love La Croy!"), or a common, unofficial nickname ("tin can i pls marry a McD'due south breakfast sandwich"). Either way, this is an opportunity to reach out and say hey.

If HBO has a search on for both #GameofThrones and #GameofThornes, they'll be able to grab chatter even from fans (or, ahem, global media conglomerates) who are too excited to spell bank check.

To rail those indirect mentions, merely fix search streams on your Hootsuite dashboard and so you don't miss a hazard to go on the conversation going.

Bonus: Use our free engagement rate calculator to find out your engagement rate 4 ways fast. Calculate information technology on a postal service-past-post basis or for an entire entrada — for any social network.

Get the reckoner now!

Prove your human being sign

It'south manner more tempting to engage with a brand when you remember in that location'south a existent person on the other end. And there is! (…Correct?) And then don't hide it.

A lot of brands encourage their social team to personally sign-off on their posts. If you're especially charming, you lot may fifty-fifty detect yourself with a cult post-obit, like the security baby-sit at The Cowboy Museum who signs each of his posts "Thanks, Tim." (PS: Lookout the episode of Fridge-Worthy defended to Tim here.)

Merely across names, in that location are lots of ways to become personal:

  • Become beyond retweeting and liking and annotate to commencement a chat
  • Acknowledge and answer questions
  • Respond to comments with sense of humor or warmth
  • Prove the people backside the brand in photos or videos

Keep response times speedy

With Hootsuite's Saved Replies function, you lot tin pre-compose responses to common queries. When an FAQ comes your way, you lot'll be at the ready with a thoughtful, informative response.

Okay, this might sound counter to the "show your homo side" point above, but stay with me. A speedy response can pb to increased client satisfaction, and save your squad time so they can provide even more back up (and homo bear on) elsewhere.

Plus, by writing your answers in accelerate, you've got all the time in the world to make certain the tone is as warm, friendly, and helpful as you want.

But you don't fifty-fifty take to write them yourself if you don't want to. Reply enough questions of a similar type, and Hootsuite will propose replies based on your previous responses (kind of like the Google suggested reply characteristic in M-Conversation). Since they are based on your previous answers, you can rest bodacious that they'll still sound man and on make.

Hootsuite inbox suggested replies

Hootsuite Inbox tin can help you manage all your comments and DMs in one identify. Check out how it works in the video below:


Schedule smarter

Posting frequently—one to three times a day, ideally—is important to keep your content fresh and active in the social streams. Posting at the correct fourth dimension each day is important also, then your sweet hedgehog meme doesn't miss its chance for maximum audience exposure.

Y'all can't exist at your calculator 24/vii (believe united states of america, nosotros've tried), but you can take advantage of scheduling tools like Hootsuite to plan and prep your posts in advance.

Hootsuite social media scheduling tool

(Source: Screenshot of @RealWeddingsBC Hootsuite dashboard)

Endeavour setting aside a cake of time (either daily or weekly) to bargain with creating and scheduling posts, and another regular fourth dimension slot to bargain with reactive and proactive responses. Then it's done for the twenty-four hour period and you lot can focus on the residue of your piece of work (or laughing at other hedgehog memes).

A few other Hootsuite dashboard features tin can too help boost your productivity and ensure you stay on top of date:

  • Streams: Use streams in your dashboard to encounter all incoming messages from each social network in one identify, instead of checking each social network separately.
  • Lists: Create Twitter lists based on specific industries, events, or hashtags and set each i up in a stream for easy monitoring and proactive engagement.
  • Tags: Use this feature to tag and track positive engagements so you tin can easily include them in your weekly or monthly reports.

Think beyond the feed

Comments or shares are great, simply these public shows of engagement aren't the only way to see that your audience cares.

Private conversations, similar direct messages or story interactions, are besides powerful examples of an engaged audition, so make sure to treat them correct (and track those numbers) too!

6 social media date tools

Have you always seen that reality show Alone? They're sent out to survive in the wild, simply they get x tools of their choice to bring along.

Similarly, you don't accept to face the social media wilds without some help. In addition to your social dashboard (an essential, IMHO), here'due south what you might want to pack in your survival kit.

Photo editing

  • Adobe Sparkmakes it easy to crop pictures to the exact specifications of dissimilar networks. Yous tin also edit photos straight in the Hootsuite Compose and add text and filters to them.

Video editing

  • Video is extremely engaging—research suggests information technology generates i,200% more shares than images or text. There are a million video editors out in that location, but Clips app for iPhone makes it super simple to slap together a few scenes and add music or text frames, all on your phone. (Funimate is really similar, but for Android users.)

GIFs

  • At this bespeak, GIFs are substantially the international language of the net. With Giphy, you tin can type in a keyword like 'excitement' or 'canis familiaris' to admission a huge library of animations to add some playfulness to any engagement.

Analytics

  • Hootsuite Insights is the all-time way to get a general overview of your date efforts. It even reports on specific keywords or topics. Brandwatch, meanwhile, offers in-depth reports that capture the entire social conversation effectually your brand and industry.

How to measure social date

Now that the comments and shares are flyin', it's fourth dimension to crunch some numbers to prove what a swell job you've been doing.

Proficient social media analytics are then important to measuring the success of your make.

Thankfully, there are plenty of tools out there to provide a general overview or run across your various social stats in one place. Calculators for social ROI or date charge per unit are helpful to consider, too.

Beyond that, you lot can always mensurate effectiveness from your social platforms directly. The specific metrics will vary with each social site, but in that location's always some juicy tidbit to take away.

Mix all of these tools together, and y'all've got admission to some serious social intel.

Here'southward what you might wait to find from some of the most pop social media platforms directly:

Facebook

Facebook Analytics contains a very robust and comprehensive dashboard with plenty of ways to track your audience date.

You can track the following metrics on the popular social media platform:

  • Accomplish and engagement: How many people saw your posts? Who interacted with them? Which posts did people hide? Did people report any posts as spam?
  • Deportment: What actions do people take on your Folio? How many people click your call-to-action button? How many people click through to your website?
  • People: What are the demographics of the people who visit your Page? (You can dive deeper into this topic with Audience Insights.) When exercise people visit your Page? How do people observe your Page?
  • Views: How many people are viewing your Page? Which sections are they looking at?
  • Posts: How are your posts performing over time?

Acquire more near Facebook Analytics here.

Twitter

Likewise, Twitter offers a robust set of tools to measure your metrics.

You lot can track the post-obit metrics on Twitter:

  • Engagement charge per unit: How many engagements and impressions did information technology become?
  • Attain percentage: How many followers saw a given tweet?
  • Link clicks: How many click-throughs did a posted link become?
  • Optimal posting time: When is your audience most likely to be online? What time zone practise they live in?

Learn more well-nigh Twitter analytics hither.

Instagram

If you have a business organisation profile, you'll exist able to access Instagram Insights to track your Instagram engagement. This dashboard provides y'all with all the vital social media engagement metrics you'll need for your campaign. Information technology's not super robust, but worth reviewing regardless.

You tin can runway the following metrics on Instagram Insights:

  • Audience demographics: Where do they alive? Are they men or women? How quondam?
  • Optimal times: When are your followers online? What days and times are they active?
  • Popular content: What gets hearts? What posts become comments?

Acquire more about Instagram analytics here.

TikTok

Everyone and their mom (literally) is on TikTok at this point—mayhap your brand should be, too?

It can exist overwhelming to join a new social media platform at first (wait, do I demand to know how to dance now?!), merely analytics help take the guesswork out of content strategy. You can stop stressing and first learning any Doja True cat moves are trending today.

Insights are available to pro accounts, and include the following metrics:

  • Audition demographics: What is my follower growth? What are they watching and listening to? Where practise they alive and how practise they identify?
  • Profile views: When has my traffic spiked?
  • Content stats: Which videos have been viewed most this calendar week? How long is the average play fourth dimension? How many comments, likes and shares did my video get?

Learn more about TikTok analytics here.

All the same you define it, social media engagement is virtually putting the "social" back in social media. Whether it'south a big party or intimate conversation with a friend, when y'all put in the time and care with people, you get it right back—so show your followers yous similar them, really like them.

Put your engagement strategy into activity and save time while you're at it by using Hootsuite to manage all your social channels from one dashboard. Endeavor it complimentary today.

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