5 ways to increase your engagement on social media

Social media is involved in almost all aspects of our lives now, and it is crucial for businesses. 

There are many reasons for this. Predominantly social media is where the attention of your customers is. 

Surveys have shown that checking social media is one of the first things people do when they wake up in the morning and the last thing they do before sleeping at night. 

So how come sometimes it can feel as if you are talking to yourself? 

You post something, and there is nothing but tumbleweeds.

Most of your posts are only shown to about a third of your followers because of the algorithm. 

Social media platforms have algorithms to help you only see the pages or posts that are likely to resonate with you. They do this so that you keep coming back. If it was just full of pointless things that don't interest you, the likelihood is you would stop checking it. 

But don't despair! 

There are ways to help the algorithm to show your content to more people.

Engagement!

If your post receives a lot of engagement, the algorithm will see that your content is of interest and will show more people.

But how do you get engagement on your post?

Here are 5 ways!

• Polls - simply put, polls ask your audience for their opinion, so when they select their answer, this is registered on the platform as engagement. The more answers that you get, the more people will see the poll. Polls work well because they are quick for the audience to answer and don't take ages to read through.

• Q&A - Viewers can ask you to answer their questions. This works very well with Instagram stories but could also be great content for a YouTube video. Asking your audience questions basically gives you fantastic content ideas for future content as well. Perhaps you can elaborate on one of the questions and dedicate a blog post or video to it.

• Recommendations - Often used for book recommendations but could just as easily be used for holidays, restaurants etc. Your audience will want to share their thoughts and opinions, which increases engagement.

• Newsjacking - If something is going on in the news, you can create a post about it. The topic will likely be considered as high interest by the algorithm on its own, but also, your audience will be primed to discuss the topic meaning that they are most likely to comment.

• Rants - this can often divide opinion, so you need to be careful. Be prepared for some backlash with this option if someone strongly disagrees with your position! Still, if you rant about something that you believe in, you will likely get engagement from your audience to either agree or disagree with your position.

You must have seen those posts that ask, "what do you call a bread roll in your town" which usually gets tonnes of different answers as it seems to be known as something completely different in every location. 

Another popular post is 'which comes first, jam or cream on a scone?' Or 'is it Scone as in 'gone' or scone as in 'cone'?

These are engagement posts and will encourage your audience to comment, which will ultimately allow your page to get more views and increase the brand awareness and possibly even the number of followers you have. 

Give it a go on your page and see what traction you can get from your audience.