How to Increase Social Media Engagement Quickly (12 Proven Tactics)

Social media engagement is what makes social media, well, social.

See, unlike traditional media, like a newspaper, social media is a two-way platform. Your followers can engage with you and you can engage with them back.

Since it’s inception, social media has been a place where people seek connection. And as a brand, social media is a place where you can build meaningful relationships and turn followers into customers. 

Social media engagement has a big impact on our business, affecting everything from brand awareness to customer retention and brand advocacy.

In this post, we’ll show you how to increase social media engagement and turn your audience into raging fans.

Let’s start by defining what social media is.

What is Social Media Engagement?

Social media engagement is a term that describes how much your audience interacts with your content. Social media engagement varies by platform but can include actions such as likes, comments, saves, and shares.

For example, on Instagram, engagement means all the possible ways of interacting with an account and its content. Engagement can be broken down into different areas:

• Post interactions, e.g. likes, comments, & story views
• Account interactions, e.g. profile views, follows, & link clicks
• Message interactions,  e.g. sending you a DM
• Interaction with other accounts: e.g. mentions, collaborations, etc.

Of course, there are many other types of interactions on Instagram, but these are the main areas under which all interactions fall.

Engagement is a great way to measure how well your content resonates with your follower base. But that’s not all it’s good for, which leads me to our next topic.

Why Social Media Engagement is Important

Why does social media engagement matter at all? 

The simple reason is that social media platforms say it matters.

See, one of the main goals of all social media platforms is to show the ‘best’ content to its users.

And part of how the platforms find the best content is by analyzing how much other users engage with it.

So firstly, good engagement means that platforms are more likely to share your content with your audience (and hopefully soon-to-be followers too). 

There’s evidence too that most social media algorithms work by rewarding accounts with high engagement - which creates a virtuous growth cycle.

Think of it like this: Good engagement = more reach, impressions, followers, and eventually more sales from every post.

Secondly, engaging content builds relationships. Likes, comments, shares, etc. all stem from an emotional connection with a particular piece of content or brand.

Social media engagement allows you to connect with your audience personally. It's an opportunity to build relationships, interact with followers, and create a sense of community.

Lastly, social media is increasingly becoming a support channel. 

Engaging with customers in real time on social media can enhance your customer experience and build trust between your followers and your brand.

How to Increase Social Media Engagement Quickly (12 Tactics)

If you’re looking to increase social media engagement fast, then these 12 tactics should do the trick. Let’s jump in:

1. Post-Value-Packed Educational Content 

Here’s the thing: you can’t expect followers to buy from you if you don’t give them something of value first.

As Gary Vaynerchuk says in his social media marketing book  ‘Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook’:

 ‘There is no sale without the story; no knockout without the setup”

See, many brands get social media wrong by treating is as a place to endlessly pump products and offers onto their follower's feeds. But a better approach is to mix your products and offers with value-based content.

How do you produce valuable content? Easy - use your industry expertise to educate followers. Take this Instagram carousel from B2C wine retailer Winc:

In this holiday-themed post, winc shares the perfect wine pairings for the upcoming Christmas celebrations. This post is timely. It helps customers with a problem. And cleverly, it also includes several of their products.

No matter what you’re selling, there are ways to educate your followers. For example, let’s say you sell:

• Gym apparel - Create a series of reels showcasing workouts that can be completed in under 15 minutes
• Dog food - Create a series of posts on how to manage separation anxiety for dogs
• Musical equipment - Create a series of 60s interviews with musicians about their gear choice

The possibilities are endless, but the concept is the same. Educational tips, tricks, and insights engage people in a way that product videos and offers can’t. It gives them a reason to follow your brand. And a follow is often the first conversion on the way to a sale.

2. Create Engagement Bait Posts

Some posts are designed specifically to generate engagement. Take this Instagram post from one of the best Shopify stores, bidet retailer HelloTushy:

The concept here is to give your followers something personal they can create. In this example, Tushy asks ‘What’s the name of your toilet?’ and then followers can create a name based on the last digit of their age and their birth month.

For example, if I were 29 and born in July, my toilet name would be ‘Fudge Factory’. While this is a little uncouth, it’s on-brand for Tushy’s tongue-in-cheek tone of voice.

Think about your industry. How can you take this concept and apply it to your brand? You can use Tushy’s template and fill in your industry-specific terms. In addition, notice how Tushy asks their followers to comment their answer to drive engagement higher.

3. Repost your best brand mentions

If you’re a reasonably established brand, chances are customers are already mentioning you on social media - especially if you’re encouraging them or incentivizing them to do so.

Reposting the best mentions of your brand is a great low-effort way to create engagement. The best part is that you don’t even have to create the content.

Case in point, this Twitter-Instagram crosspost from eyewear brand Warby Parker:

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One of their followers discovered that Warby Parker’s virtual try-on feature also works on dogs. This is a super funny post that no doubt inspired many more just like it.

Even if you don’t have lots of brand mentions, you can re-create this type of content with your friends and family.

Or if you’re a new brand with only a few mentions, you can repost a collection of the best posts in your vertical like Char Food Guide does:

In these weekly roundups, the Irish-based food magazine simply takes the funniest posts they’ve seen all week and curates them into a carousel. 

If you’re browsing social media in your spare time, saving any posts to a folder and then reposting them like this is a low-effort way to generate more social media engagement.

4. Follow brands with high engagement & recreate their best posts

Another way to increase social media engagement get inspired by what’s working for other brands. 

For example, dog food subscription service BarkBox gets tonnes of social media engagement with simple posts like this:

This type of funny chart post applies to pretty much every industry. For example, here’s another example from Dolla Shave Club:

Seriously, let’s say you sell guitars. You could say ‘Reasons why I play guitar’ and then come up with 4-5 relatable ideas:

• It’s creative (2%)
• It’s challenging (2%)
• I can play in a band (2%)
• Girls think I’m cooler than I really am (94%)

This example isn’t great, but it’s just one off the top of my head. But the idea is to use the formula of super engaging posts and adapt them to your own brand, audience, and vertical.

Some brands with amazing social media engagement to follow (and save their post ideas) are:

• Ryanair
• BarkBox
• Chipotle
• Booking.com
• Wendy’s
• Glossier

5. Run a Weekly Poll on Your Instagram Story

Polls are naturally engaging. When you ask a question, people are inclined to want to express their opinion (and see what other people are thinking too).

For your polls, you can run your products (e.g. which do you prefer), but don’t have to limit yourself. 

For example, the online supermarket Shuppa runs an ‘underrated/overrated’ weekly poll on trending topics:

People are interested in knowing what the consensus on popular topics is - so they’re incentivized to answer. 

An answer counts as an engagement, which means that the social media platforms think people are interested in your account. So, next time you post an offer, it’ll also show up early in their feed or story roll.

You can also use polls in other types of social posts to encourage engagement like Chipotle does in this feed post:

In this example, Chipotle takes a hotly debated customer topic (the correct way to eat their bowl) and puts it out to popular vote.

Another example of asking a controversial question:

The idea here is that you ask your audience to choose one of two options. It can be silly, or it can be more serious - both work. Although we’d advise staying away from particularly inflammatory topics such as religion and politics to ensure you don’t end up alienating some of your audience. 

📖Suggested reading: Instagram Story Size: Best Practices and Examples

6. Share Behind the Scenes Content

Another easy way to boost social media engagement is to show behind-the-scenes content. See, showing your human side resonates far better than boring corporate stuff. 

If you’re a solo founder, don’t be afraid to jump behind the camera and share updates about how the business is going. You can share anything from behind-the-scenes photoshoots to pitching to investors. More and more, the founders are becoming the brand of many common

Using your regular phone to shoot this kind of content is fine - you don’t need high-end production. On the contrary, the more raw and natural content often gets higher engagement rates as it seems more native to social media platforms.

7. Use Automation to Create User-Generated Content

User-generated content is a great way to boost engagement and add serious social proof to your brand. Here’s an example from Glossier:

UGC looks native to social media platforms, so it typically attracts high levels of engagement.

There are several ways you can capture UGC, but we’d recommend building an automated collection system.

For example, here at ReConvert, we created a simple email automation flow for this:

• After a user is billed, we send them an email offering a free month if they submit a video review of the app
• This email links to a simple Google form where they can upload the file
• We get a steady stream of reviews we can use in our marketing campaigns

You can create a similar campaign in your email marketing platform. The key is to offer an incentive, for example, 25% off their next purchase.

The great thing about social proof is that you can re-purpose it across your sales funnel. For example, inflatable.shop collects reviews and displays them on thier homepage to boost shopper confidence:

8. Don’t be afraid to make fun of yourself

We’re naturally drawn to self-deprecating people. Comedians who make fun of themselves in a relatable way crack us up. 

Ryanair owns its bad name with pride. Instead of trying to be perfect, embrace your mess-ups, and share them for the whole world to see.

Ryanair’s social media account is an amazing source of inspiration for how to make your brand relatable and engaging on social. They use memes to make fun of themselves, and often their customers too in a playful manner. 

9. Respond to Every Comment & Mention

Social media is a place to be social. If your followers engage with your content, you should engage back.

When you respond, people are much more likely to engage again in the future. 

Plus when others see you responding, they trust you more - and are also more likely to comment themselves - especially if your responses are helpful.

What’s more, is that Social media algorithms see that you want to create engagement and so they help your posts reach more people.

Remember, comments are a direct (and public) way to communicate with your customers, receive feedback, and build trust and loyalty - all the reasons you’re spending time on social media in the first place!

10. Run a Giveaway (Occasionally)

Running a giveaway is an awesome way to boost social media engagement.

But, you must approach giveaways with care to ensure it’s a win-win for everyone. 

Instead of bombarding with giveaways, sprinkle them into your strategy for genuine engagement.

Encourage fun stuff like tagging friends and sharing, rather than just chasing prizes. You don’t want to simply attract a load of people looking (or worse, expecting) free stuff all the time. 

And speaking of prizes, make sure they're cool and relevant to your audience. Something your followers actually want.

Give crystal clear entry guidelines, so there's no head-scratching. Don’t be afraid to spice things up by asking participants to get creative with UGC that's all about your brand. 

What’s important is to keep the energy going even after the giveaway wraps—interact, reply to comments, and build that community buzz.

Throw in different calls to action during giveaways, and keep an eye on what's working. 

Striking a balance between giveaways and ongoing engagement is the secret sauce to growing a loyal and engaged audience.

11. Use X (formerly Twitter) as your content idea testing ground

According to Hootsuite, the optimal posting frequency on X is between 2-3 times per day. This is higher than other platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

So this makes X the ideal testing ground for content ideas. If you post 3 times per day, and see that one type of post resonates, then you can repurpose that content across your other platforms as Chipotle does here:

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This idea of testing content ideas leads us nicely to our last tip for boosting social media engagement.

12. Track what works & do more of that

In a recent interview, Ryaniar’s former head of social media marketing said he would save any content idea that got good engagement in a file. 

Then whenever they needed to create a new post, they’d open the file and remake a different version using the same template.

Using this approach over time led them to find hundreds of ideas that they knew would attract solid engagement. 

So, create your own high-engagement swipe file. Anytime you get above-average engagement, save that post idea. Then, recreate it later. 

Just the same way as you a/b test your ads to get better results over time, you should do this for your social media posts too. That way you’ll make sure you're constantly improving. Over a year, you’ll know for sure what type of content gets the most engagement. 

Social Media Engagement Questions

Questions are always a great way to boost social media engagement. Use these questions to inspire post ideas and drive your engagement upwards. Remember to tailor them to your brand voice & audience

Product-related social media engagement questions

• What’s your favorite product we make?
• What product should we make next?
• What product should we make next? (wrong answers only)
• Ask anything you want about [insert product]
• Where’s the strangest place you’ve seen our product?
• What’s a use for [insert product] that we haven’t thought of yet?
• If you could change one thing about [insert product], what would it be?
• Describe our products in 3 emojis
• What celebrity needs insert product] the most?
• If you could have one of our products free forever, which do you pick?
• Who needs this product? (tag them & we’ll send one entry a free one!)

General social media engagement questions

• What are your top three goals for this year?
• What three items would you take to a desert island?
• You can have dinner with 3 famous people. Who do you pick?
• What’s the best travel destination you’ve been to (& why?)
• What sport would like to be a world champion in?
• Who are you most grateful to this week? (tag them!)
• Who made you smile today? (tag them in the comments!)
• What book would our followers love? (Post it below!)

Boost Your Social Media Engagement Rate Today!

Getting more social media engagement isn’t rocket science. But it can be tricky in the beginning.

Hopefully, this post inspires you to create posts that your audience will love. Like most things in digital marketing, getting more engagement is an iterative process.

You’ll need to create lots of posts and see what resonates with your audience. Over time, you’ll get better results and know the type of content that generates engagement.

Your social media account is like your own little party. The more people enjoy it, the more they'll stick around and bring their friends. So, what's your party trick going to be?

Social Media Engagement FAQ

Let’s quickly cover some of the most commonly asked questions related to social media engagement.

How do you gain engagement on social media?

To boost engagement on social media, create compelling content, use eye-catching visuals, post consistently, engage with your audience through comments and messages, leverage hashtags strategically, and analyze analytics to refine your approach.

Why is social engagement important?

Social engagement is crucial for building a loyal audience, increasing brand visibility, and fostering a community around your brand. It enhances brand trust, encourages user participation, and can lead to higher conversion rates.

What does social media engagement measure?

Social media engagement measures the level of interaction and connection between your audience and your content. It includes likes, shares, comments, clicks, and overall participation, reflecting the impact and resonance of your posts.

What is social media engagement theory?

Social media engagement theory explores the principles and strategies behind effectively connecting with an audience online. It delves into understanding user behavior, optimizing content for engagement, and adapting to evolving platform algorithms to maximize the impact of social media efforts.