How to Get More Engagement on Facebook and Instagram

Social Media is an ever-changing platform that can be hard to keep up with—especially when it comes to understanding your audience and how to get more engagement on your Facebook and Instagram posts.

You might find yourself putting a lot of effort into posting content for your audience only to see low engagement rates. To help you get the most of your efforts, we’ve simplified the specifics of how to improve social media strategy to keep your audience engaged!

Do you want...?

• More leads and conversions?
  Follow the Entire 4C Formula outlined below.

• To increase brand awareness and brand legitimacy?
  Focus on the Capture & Connect Stages.

• Better relationships with your customers?
  Focus mostly on the Converse stage.

The 4C Strategy for Improving Audience Engagement

Capture

Posting Strategy

Your Facebook and Instagram engagement strategy should be designed to “capture” the attention of your target audience. Oftentimes, these posts are educational and/or entertaining. This is where how-to content and myths and mistakes posts come in.

Strategic Engagement

Make a list of brands and people your target audience follows. Follow, like, and make insightful comments on the accounts’ content. The goal is to increase brand awareness and the more you pop up on your audience’s timeline or news feed, the more your brand will remain top of mind—and improve your organic reach.

Connect

Once you’ve captured the attention of a potential customer, the first place they’re going to go is your feed. Your Instagram highlights give visitors an instant overview of the type of content you post—which should give them an instant overview of what your business has to offer.

Story highlight content should be highly personable with a lot of face time from key employees.

We always recommend a “Start Here” story highlight with a nice introduction from an employee or owner. This is your chance to introduce yourself to your audience, let them know who you are and who you serve, what you offer, the type of solution you provide, and the type of content they can expect to see from you once they follow you.

* Keep in mind that Instagram Highlights are ordered chronologically, meaning whichever highlight category you’ve added to most recently will show first.

To keep “Start Here” first (farthest to the left), add a random story to the Start Here category, then immediately delete it.

Quick, calculate your current facebook and instagram engagement rate! This way you can measure your results later and ensure your efforts are worth it. Engagement Rate = (Total post engagement / total followers) x 100

Converse

Conversing is all about proactively building relationships with your followers by engaging with them on their content and through direct messaging.

For every new follower you get, first-time commenters, and anyone who shares your content:

• Follow them (unless they’re spammy)
• Visit their feed and get to know what they’re about.
• DM the new follower with something thoughtful. Whatever message you share should have no expectations or strings attached. No question, link, or call-to-action. The recipient of your message should think, “Wow, that was nice.”

VIP

Make a list of your most important followers—loyal customers, members, people who routinely engage with your content, key prospects, etc. Make it a daily habit to make thoughtful comments on their posts (not just emojis). You can even create a custom feed that shows posts only from the accounts you've favorited!

Engagers

Respond to other people’s stories that mention you, share their content when appropriate, and send them direct messages thanking them for participating in the conversation with you.

Your Newsfeed

Like and make insightful, meaningful, or sincere comments on as many other people’s posts as you have time for. Followers are more likely to engage with your content if they see you are an active participant within the online community.

Convert

Conversion Content

These are the posts about a specific product or service that you offer with a call to action to purchase. This could be a simple post promoting new products or services for purchase, or a post about your service availability. For example if you’re creating Facebook posts or stories, adding “Purchase Today” and “Book Now” as calls to action provides a way for your audience to easily engage with your content.

Pay attention to when your audience is active and identify the best time to comment, like, and share! Posting and interacting during peak activity hours will ensure your content shows up on their feed!

Focusing on different aspects of your social media will lead to different outcomes. For example, if you are most interested in relationship building with your customers and users, focus on the “Converse” stage. Responding to users will help build better relationships and brand awareness and will lead to increased engagement on your social media platforms. It’s important to tailor your content to your audience engagement strategy and what engages your audience the most.

Need more ideas to increase engagement on facebook and instagram? We can help! Get in touch and we’ll help get your engagement back on track.