Everyone wants to be in a dominating position where people listen to what they have to say. To make this easier, there are now plenty of ways you can influence people’s thoughts, voice your opinions, and impact society.
Thanks to the world of likes, comments, and followers, there are plenty of opportunities for someone to become an influencer.
And becoming one can be quite profitable. According to Influence.co, an Instagram influencer gets $271 on average for a single sponsored post.
Image Source – Influence.co
Another study by Influencer Marketing Hub revealed that influencer marketing is the preferred customer acquisition method today. Additionally, brands are aggressively looking to invest in influencer marketing more than ever before.
With a handsome remuneration and brands looking for people who can influence their audiences, this career option is continuously gaining popularity.
Becoming a social media influencer seems easy, but the harsh truth is that it’s not.
You have to repeatedly create great content. Not just for days or months, but years. Most importantly, you have to get new followers onboard and think of social media engagement ideas to keep them engaged.
The good news is that you can use these effective social media engagement ideas to help you grow your following on social media.
1. Post Quality Content
Social media is all about engagement. Create an appealing feed by posting high-quality content, including images, videos, and Stories. Captions are the icing on the cake so pay attention and create a relevant and valuable caption for everything you post.
Develop a theme to professionally portray yourself to the world, just like photographer and mom influencer, Christine does on her Instagram feed. She follows the same color theme throughout her feed and captions each post accurately. The organized squares make the feed look even more satisfying.
Image Source: Instagram
As you can see in the following post, she’s helped promote a diaper bag. And her caption accurately explains the image and the product being promoted.
Image Source: Instagram
2. Host Giveaway Contests
Another effective social media engagement idea is to host a giveaway contest. It gives everyone a chance to win and get something for free. This entices users to interact with your content more often.
It not only keeps your existing followers engaged but also invites new ones to participate and win. This creates a win-win situation for you and your audience.
The following post is by Lydz who is a fashion photographer and the founder of u + i magazine. She created a contest giving away a t-shirt with her favorite portrait imprinted on it. In this post, she also listed four simple steps to win the tee.
Image Source- Instagram
3. Follow and Engage With Relevant Accounts
To increase your followers on social media, the best way is to find and follow popular accounts in your niche. You can like a bunch of their photos and leave meaningful comments. And you can connect with their followers by replying to their comments.
Just by doing this, you could draw the attention of a relevant audience. You could possibly even gain a few additional followers, provided you have an appealing feed loaded with valuable content.
Hunt for quality accounts to follow by going through the list of accounts other influencers are following.
You can also join relevant groups on Facebook and discover well-curated public Twitter lists. Search for active accounts that produce high-quality and valuable content consistently.
4. Post Consistently
One of the best social media engagement ideas is to be consistent. You might have come across posts suggesting appropriate times to post on social media. Those time frames are just an estimate, and they work in your favor only if you are consistent.
There is a no magic formula on what times you should post on social media. Instead, you should post consistently. For this, you can create a content plan, set goals, and make use of social media engagement tools to schedule and publish your posts.
For that, you can use tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, CoSchedule and Sprout Social depending on the features and your budget.
Lynzy is a motherhood life and style blogger who sticks to publishing at least one post a day on Instagram. She prefers quality posting than frequency posting, but she still maintains a consistent schedule to keep her followers on their toes.
Image Source: Instagram
5. Use Relevant Hashtags
At times when you run out of social media engagement ideas, just include a few hashtags related to your content and see the magic happen.
Hashtags are and have always been important for content discovery on social media. But they can also help you increase your followers.
Many users outside your follower base follow hashtags. The inclusion of well-thought-out hashtags in your post can attract and engage the interested audience who follow the same hashtags.
This helps you engage users outside your following and gives them a chance to follow you.
The best way to search for right hashtags is to see what industry leaders and your competitors are using.
Laura Heijari, a photographer and a smoothie lover from Finland makes clever use of hashtags in the following post. She includes Instagram hashtags like #breakfastbowl (378,177 posts), #superfoods (2,065,259 posts) and #bestofvegan (1,851,298 posts). There are also some popular ones like #foodporn (175,509,381 posts) and #healthyeating (26,442,922 posts).
Image Source- Instagram
6. Collaborate With Other Influencers
Get together with other influencers to discuss their struggles and successes that would not only engage your audience but motivate them. A casual discussion in a fun and candid manner is a great way to engage your followers.
Plus, it will also attract new followers in the form of the other influencers’ audience bases. So you’ll not only be engaging your audience but also driving new followers to your profile.
Indian YouTuber, Gaurav Chaudhary, brought together fellow influencers for an inside talk on his channel, discussing their journey as YouTubers. The casual setup looks extremely amiable.
This is another amazing social media engagement idea to get new followers and keep the existing ones interested and engaged.
Wrapping Up
Focus on consistency and quality posting rather than setting goals that are extremely hard to achieve. The above mentioned social media engagement ideas can not only help you keep your followers engaged, but attract new followers as well.
Do you have any more ideas to share? Feel free to comment in the section below.
