Engaging Your Audience on Social Media

You may have noticed how the social media landscape is changing in the past few years. Doesn’t there seem to be less engagement on your posts and less posting by others that aren’t influencers, or just plain ads? But this doesn’t mean you can’t still be engaging your audience on social media. 

The Most Effective Types of Content for Engaging Your Audience on Social Media

Social media is changing and the types of content and creators are shifting, and this is all having an effect on engagement.  But luckily, there are people who track this type of stuff and they’ve found there are some tried and true ways of engaging your audience on social media. 

Video

Using video as a way of engaging your audience on social media isn’t totally new. But it remains consistently popular. So much so that new social platforms, entirely for video, have popped up and other platforms have shifted their focus to making it easier to create and share videos in a variety of ways. Remember back when Instagram was a site for photo content? Well, now it thrives on Reels, which is the platform’s video content. The same is true for dusty old Facebook. 

Pretty and Emotional

Now just because video has become the preferred format for platforms, and apparently users, doesn’t mean it’s the only type of content you can use to engage your audience on social media. Anything aesthetically pleasing and evocative catches attention, and therefore, will be blessed by various social media algorithms. This means making posts that are both pretty and emotional. Basically, be genuine and honest, and people respond.

Quizzes and Polls/Surveys

Another consistently popular type of content across platforms for engaging your audience on social media is asking for direct engagement. How do you do this? Well, you actually ask your viewers and followers a question. It can be in the form of a quiz, poll or survey too. People love to answer questions about themselves, and see how those answers compare to others. 

It should be noted that engaging your audience on social media requires your effort too. You don’t have to create this type of content every day, it’s just the most likely type to get engagement. So remember to be there, and available, when you post this type of content. Especially if it’s particularly interactive. For instance, a poll(when using an available template) only requires you to check in once the poll is complete. But if you’re asking your audience for advice or their opinion, you may be expected to respond pretty quickly. Not everyone has the time or energy for this type of content, so create it and/or schedule it for a time that works for you! 

Where and How to Use this Type of High Engagement Content

As we mentioned, this type of content doesn’t have to be an everyday kind of strategy for engaging your audience on social media. You can, of course. But if your main goal with social media is to merely have a presence and you use it as part of your SEO strategy, then you only need to use this type of high engagement content when it will be the most beneficial to you. 

Use High Engagement Content for Promos

A great time to start putting more effort into engaging your audience on social media is for promoting upcoming events. If you have a book release coming up soon, are teaching a workshop, or will be speaking at an event, this is the type of content you want to use to grab the attention of your audience. 

Some Ideas for Using this Type of Content

These can all be used for different reasons, at different times. You can use them as part of your long-term strategy and let your audience follow you through the whole process if you feel up to it. 

• Create a reel or TikTok covering the main points of your webinar—use graphics to give it a boost.

• Take a poll asking which book cover version your audience prefers.

• Ask your audience questions about their own experience in your industry, or about their book genre.

• Make a post featuring a high quality photo of your book with an eye-catching background to celebrate the upcoming release. Let them know how proud you are and how excited you feel! 

• Use stories or reels instead of just a standard post to update your audience on what you’ve been up to.

• Post unboxing videos when you receive your printed and bound books.

These are just a few of the ways you can begin engaging your audience on social media, but if you get creative and check out what others are doing you may find yourself inspired! Remember, you don’t have to do this all the time, unless your goals require that. But using these types of content that are proven to get higher engagement can be super useful when you’re hoping for an engagement boost. 

Try some of them out and look at the numbers. You’ll probably find this type of content gets a lot more engagement from your audience these days. And this can be especially useful when you’re promoting something special!