You’ve primed and perfected your content for the month. It’s informative, aesthetic and on-brand. All you need to do is post it and wait for the likes and comments to come rolling in.
Only, they don’t roll in. Or when they do, the volumes are not what you’d imagine.
Often our posts seem to miss the mark with engagement. We’re here to tell you possible reasons why, and how to avoid your posts not getting engagement going forward.
You are posting at the wrong time.
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all rule for which time is best to post for engagement. Each business has a different audience with different social habits.
If you are struggling to generate engagement with your current following, there’s a strong possibility that the time you post your content is not aligned with the hours your audience spends online.
To discover when your audience is online, we suggest visiting the Insights section on Instagram, selecting Audience and scrolling down to see what hours your followers are most active on each day. This will provide you with clarity on when you should be posting to ensure you are reaching the most eyeballs possible.
The majority of your posts are too sales focused.
The beauty of social media is that you don’t need to hard-sell to build relationships or grow your sales. People are seeking genuine connections on Instagram & Facebook, and rather feeling sold to, people want to feel valued and listened to.
If over half of your posts are sales-focused, you may need to implement more fun and informative content which tends to your customer’s questions, interests and hobbies. Take the pressure off your business goals and remind yourself on what your brands voice and personality is. Share this with your customers in an organic way & work on building trust with the occasional sales-focused post.
Your posts aren’t resonating with your audience.
Your post may be fantastic, but perhaps it’s just not relatable for your audience. If this is potentially the case, you’re lucky that it is easy to get around! On Instagram and Facebook, you could post stories asking what people love to see on their social media or their thoughts on your current content. Even hosting a small focus group can be a great way to gather constructive feedback from your target audience.
Once you’ve got a better understanding of the kinds of posts your audience enjoys interacting with online, you should then tailor your content to fit within these guidelines.
Your posts are irregular.
It’s been found that brands who post fewer than 2 posts a week or more than 2 posts per day begin to lose engagement from their audience. (Social Bakers) If you are posting irregularly, this could be the reason for your lack in engagement.
If your posts are irregular or sporadic, do your best to post more consistently or even look into pre-planning your content and scheduling it ahead of each month. This way, your audience will get a consistent stream of content showing up in their feeds and will bring your brand to the forefront of their mind.
Once you’ve nailed these four things, we encourage you to ensure you are doing the following to boost each posts engagement.
Ask questions.
If your audience loves your brand, many of them will engage with you if presented opportunities to. We encourage for you to ask questions in your posts that relate to your brand. What three emojis describe their self-care routine? Who is their best friend and why? How many packets of Tim Tams do they consume each month? Find fun questions that link back to your brand & encourage comments.
Boost your posts.
Due to Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms, it’s almost impossible to organically reach all of your followers through a post without boosting it. If you’ve found that you’ve followed our tips earlier and have amended your content to suit your audience with still no luck, we suggest putting some money behind each post to boost it out to your audience. This can work wonders in re-engaging your dormant audience & can result in them beginning to organically engage down the track.
Reply to comments and encourage conversation.
Once you have people commenting on your posts, there’s one sure-fire way of doubling or tripling your engagement: questions! Treat every comment as a new customer lead; after all, they have shown interest – now it’s your turn to provide them with a memorable brand moment. Try to reply to your comments with questions to encourage a conversation – this will boost your engagement greatly and also build trust and your brand reputation.
If you are after professional help on boosting your engagement on social media, we’d love to help your business. Please get in touch here.
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They may only be up for 24 hours, but did you know well over 50% of people are influenced to making purchases after viewing? Curating your IG and FB Stories and tailoring to your audience’s interest can make all the difference in your business’s success.