Let’s talk about engagement on social media. If you hear the term tossed around a lot but aren’t sure what it means, it’s referring to how receptive your audience is and how much they are interacting with your content. You can measure social media engagement in the following ways:
- Number of post likes
- Number of post comments
- Number of post shares
- Number of links clicks
Some people also take a look at the total number of views for a post, or how many people watched a video. Those are important metrics, but just because someone saw your content doesn’t mean they engaged with it, or with you.
What we’re truly looking for is the number of people you inspired to take action.
Here’s why that’s important:
Actions Grow Your Reach
When you are working to grow your audience, social media engagement helps expose your content to more people. This is especially important on a Facebook where the average page reach is 1-4%.
That means if you have 100 followers, on average only 1-4 people are seeing your posts. This changes (and grows) when people engage with your content.
At this point Facebook’s algorithm is as complicated as Google’s, but what we do know is that the goal is to make popular content rise to the top. So if your posts regularly have likes, comments and shares, Facebook is much more likely to show your content to people.
Likes, Comments and Shares Act as an Endorsement
We know that people look to their friends for recommendations on products and services. So when you see a friend share content from a company, you may be much more likely to check it out, than if that content came through your feed as an ad.
Social Media Engagement Gives You Feedback
Social media engagement is also terribly important for you as a content creator. If you put a post out and no one responds to it, you’re left wondering: Did anyone see it? Did anyone care?
But when you have people engaged with your content it helps you understand what they want to see from you, and what’s not so great. Here are some things to look for:
- Do some posts get more likes while others get more shares?
- Do other types of posts receive less response on social media, but end up driving people back to your website?
Ideally you’ll have a mix of different types of engagement to meet your different social media goals. But if you’re not getting any social media engagement check out these tips to help you step up your game.