Social media is quickly taking the throne in the world of digital marketing. Businesses, big and small, today believe that the right social media strategy is a key catalyst for driving brand growth. And social media influencers are a big part of social media marketing for businesses.
A look at the rearview mirror shows that 86% of digital marketers used influencers in 2017, and a whopping 92% of them found it to be effective in a Linqia study. This shows that influencer marketing is big. But if you want to stand out as an influencer and get great partnerships with brands, then you need to focus on improving your performance metrics.
The most important metric, however, is your social media engagement rate. According to the previously-cited Linqia study, 90% of marketers measure the success of their influencer marketing campaigns using engagement rate. And 42% of digital marketers monitored engagement levels to measure the ROI of their social media campaigns as a whole.
Image via Buffer
The key takeaway from these numbers is that you should constantly work to improve your social media engagement rate if you want to succeed as an influencer. In this post, you’ll discover some effective techniques to do just that.
Why Your Social Media Engagement Rates Matter
An engaged audience is one that likes, comments on, interacts with, and shares your posts. Brands look for influencers with an engaged audience because it means they can drive conversations, increase leads, and ultimately boost sales. You may have thousands of followers, but if you aren’t increasing engagement levels, then your ranking as an influencer may take a hit.
Let’s take a look at some of the best ways to improve social media engagement across platforms. To succeed as an influencer, you need to know what and how to post. Check out the basic rules for content creation to increase engagement:
7 Sure-Fire Ways to Improve Your Social Media Engagement Rates
1. Be Consistent
Remember this simple social media strategy – “the more you post, the faster you grow.”
You need to have a consistent posting schedule. Decide on whether you want to post once, twice, or even thrice daily. Or if you’re going to post just three times a week.
Once you decide on your schedule, you have to stick to it.
You can use social media post scheduling tools to automatically publish posts and plan content ahead of time, even if you’re busy.
Image via Social Media Examiner
According to a Social Media Examiner report, 69% of social media marketers spend more than six hours every week on social media. And 39% of marketers spend over 11 hours on social media every week.
You need to put in the time to see results.
2. Decide on a Theme
Your account should match with the interests of your target audience. For instance, check out the Instagram page of @thedadlab, a social media influencer targeting young parents. His account is full of posts catering to his audience.
Images via thedadlab
As you can see, all of his posts are images of him and his kids, experimenting, and just having fun. That sticks to his theme, and helps him win over his target audience.
3. Focus on Aesthetics
Social media platforms, be it Facebook or Instagram, are highly visual mediums. To get noticed, you need attractive content.
The importance of good images cannot be overemphasized. In fact, the engagement rates of Facebook posts without an image drop by 120%. Hence, if you are looking to improve your social media engagement rate, then your posts should have a mix of visuals like photos, GIFs, memes, infographics, and more.
Take the example of @chicstripes, a personal stylist and social media influencer from Sydney. All of her posts have a sun-kissed chic vibe that immediately appeals to her target audience.
Image via Chicstripes
So, what do if your photography skills are a bit rusty and you don’t have a team of graphic designers to beautify your posts? Worry not, you can still attract followers by having the right tools on hand.
You can use popular photo-editing tools like Piktochart, Canva, Typorama, Phonto, Word Swag, and Photoshop to edit your photos the right way.
4. Use Video
Video marketing is at an all-time high and Cisco has predicted that by 2022, nearly 82% of all IP traffic (both business and consumer) will be video.
Videos add variety to your content. Besides the usual YouTube videos, you can explore different styles of videos on other platforms. This could include Instagram and Facebook Stories, inspirational clips, tutorials, product reviews, fun animations, and more.
Image via Unbox Therapy
Influencer, Lewis Hilsenteger, creates YouTube videos and promotes them on his Instagram and Facebook profiles. This is an excellent example of how to use videos the right way.
He creates videos that aren’t just entertaining, but also useful to viewers. Thereby pulling in his target audience and boosting engagement rates. With over 2.1 million subscribers on Instagram, his engagement rates are phenomenal.
Instead of just sharing the link to your video, you can even extract short clips and share them on social media. This will lead people to the full video content on your YouTube channel or website.
5. Use Wit and Humor
Remember that people login to their social media accounts to be entertained and not sold to. So if your posts are overly promotional, then you are likely to lose the attention of your audience.
@howtodadnz is a social media influencer from New Zealand who has captivated a global audience. How? With his witty and downright funny posts on parenting as a dad.
Image via howtodadnz
Check out the post above. Although he’s promoting the brand Panasonic, he manages to keep it light and genuine.
Instead, of sounding advertorial all the time, try to infuse humor and wit into your posts to hook in the attention of your audience, and get them to engage with you.
6. Be You
This one cannot be stressed enough. Don’t imitate the styles of other popular influencers. Instead, create your own style. Be authentic and genuine, as followers love to engage with people they trust. Be relatable and honest. And make sure you’re open to feedback and suggestions from your followers.
7. Be Patient
Improving your social media engagement rates takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. You need to be consistent in your posting schedule, content, photography style, editing, style, and more. It may even take months for you to increase your followers and improve your social media engagement rates.
Remember there are no shortcuts. And schemes to get followers quickly may give you the numbers you need, but not the engagement levels you desire.
However, if you’re committed to it and you’re passionate about your theme, then results will happen. You can slowly and steadily build a community of followers who trust you and are engaged with your content.
Over to You
These seven tips are the best ways to improve your social media engagement. If you have tried a few of these, then try implementing the other tactics to boost your engagement levels further.
If you have any questions on implementing these tactics, feel free to post your queries in the comments below. Got any other tried-and-tested methods to improve your social media engagement rates? Share them with us in the comments below.
