7 Social Media Hacks to Boost Your Engagement

With all Social Networks launching their own algorithms, Engagement rate has become one of the most important factors for social media success.

Simply having a lot of followers or fans is not enough. You need to make sure that users are interacting with your brand by liking, commenting, or sharing your posts.

You must use Engagement rate as the metric to evaluate performance at social media.

Remember, we are talking about meaningful engagement. Techniques like click bait, sensationalisation, or hoax stories can be counterproductive.

So what’s the secret of high engagement rate?

Here are 7 social media hacks to boost your engagement:

1 – Videos

Everyone loves videos. It’s the easiest way to digest information, so engagement rates are usually phenomenal. The Facebook team realised this too, so they decided to give any video uploaded to Facebook way more exposure than any other type of post. Then they went one step further and made videos auto play when people scroll over them.

Most videos on Facebook are of a viral sensationalist nature (like in the screenshot below), but the algorithm still favours videos in general. Out of all the types of content you can share on Facebook, a video is by far the type that will consistently trump any other in terms of engagement.

2 – Polls

Create a poll to know their preferences, likes, and dislikes. You can ask them to choose between two different options (relevant to your business). Apart from the engagement, it will also give you insight into their preferences that you can use for product creation or marketing.

3 – Quizzes & Questions

The easiest way to make someone speak is to ask for their opinion.

Quizzes can also work equally well.

4 – Feel Good Posts

Humorous or feel-good posts are often shared the most. Any post, quote, or message that makes your target audience smile will get a boost in interactions.

You can ask them to like or share the posts but remember that Facebook and some other platforms don’t like pages that explicitly ask people to like or share their posts.

Besides, ending all posts with a request to like or share the post will make you look desperate.

Instead, wait for the right content, for example, a post with a tip or information that will be of help to their friends, or a heart touching message like the following.

5 – Identify the best time to post

People will usually like & interact with a post in their spare time. During work, they are too caught up to comment or share, even if they like the post.

Various studies have proved that engagement rate is usually the highest on Saturdays and Sundays, but it can differ from one platform and target audience to another.

The best way to figure out the right time is to post at different timings and use analytics to find the best time.

You can also get an idea of the best time by going to Facebook Insights and clicking on “Posts”.

It will tell you the days and the times when the maximum numbers of people are online, so you can post your best content at those days and times.

Once you’ve figured out the right time, all you need is a tool that allows you to schedule posts.

Jarvis can do that for you (and a lot more).

Just click on Schedule, and choose the timings that you want to use.

6 – Post more Often

Most online businesses are targeting users in different regions parts of the world, so you should try to post more often to ensure that you are reaching out to users in different time zones at their own peak time. Don’t treat this as an excuse to go and send out an update every 5 seconds. There is a balance to be maintained. Try post as much as possible without making your followers feel like they are being spammed to death.

7 – Say Thanks

The key to improved engagement is remembering that it’s not about you or your business. It’s about your target audience and what they are looking for.

Make them the center of attention and they will be compelled to respond.