5 Tips to Increase Engagement on Social Media [Infographic]

By Giselle Aguiar / November 6, 2023

Followers on social media are good, but engagement is better. Likes are good, but shares are better.

There’s no doubting the fact that social media usage has increased tremendously in 2020. It’s insufficient to just post on social media and hope that your message gets to who needs to see it. You want engagement on your posts.

What is Social Media Engagement?

LinkedIn Reactions - engagement — LinkedIn Reactions

Likes or reactions — Facebook and LinkedIn offer reactions — a little more than just liking a post.
Comments — When someone comments on your post, it shows on their personal wall on Facebook and LInkedIn. Hence, you get more exposure. People may also ask questions in the comment boxes rather than sending an email.
Shares — This is the best way to get more reach and exposure. When someone shares your post with their followers, your reach increases by however many followers they have. That doesn’t mean that all their followers will see it. But it greatly increases your chances that they’ll follow you, click on the link, like or comment.
Link clicks — Not every post has links, but if there’s a link, the objective of the post is to have people click on the link to go to that website. Links don’t work in Instagram posts — only in Instagram Stories.
Saves — On most networks, you have the ability to save a post to view or read it later. On X (formerly Twitter), liking a tweet also saves it.

The Benefits of Increased Engagement

The more engagement you have, the more visibility you get. The more visibility you get, the greater the chances that a user will do something like follow, click on a link or ask a question.

You also get to know your followers. Your insights and analytics will tell you which posts got the most engagement. Usually, videos and graphics get the highest action. This tells you that you need to post more of those types of posts — and more often.

5 Tips to Help you Increase your Social Media Engagement

Know your target audience and understand why they are on social media. For instance, are they there to shop, for business, for entertainment, or seeking employment?
Post high-quality content. With so many free tools, there is absolutely no excuse for sloppy, fuzzy graphics, or bad, shaky videos with terrible sound.
Vary your content. Good content marketing includes a mixture of blogs, videos, pictures, graphics, and podcasts.
Be witty and funny. However, use humor carefully. Many funny videos tend to go viral.
Participate in the Conversation. Engagement works both ways. This is why it’s important to monitor your social networks daily. Using a tool like Sendible or TweetDeck (now X Pro and no longer free) makes it easy to monitor your social media accounts and respond to comments or questions in a timely manner.