5 Tips to Improve Social Media Marketing Engagement Metrics (2023)

Understanding and Improving Social media marketing engagement metrics is essential for making this channel an effective source of revenue, find out how.

Image Source: Pixabay

Whenever you run a social media campaign, you will want to know how effective it has been in eliciting the response you want. Social media marketing engagement metrics refers to data that lets you determine how successful your campaign has been.

Social media platforms provide a powerful channel through which to interact with online users. They have become an essential part of marketing efforts but require a means by which to gauge their performance.

Metrics allow you to figure out how the content you put out has been received. You get to learn different kinds of information such as how much brand awareness has been built and even how many conversions a post has generated. As you get to grips with the different kinds of data created, you can then discover how to better modify your campaign for an even better response.

Sourced from Pixabay

Some of the most popularly used engagement metrics used on top social media platforms include:

• Likes – Found on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, this reaction allows users to show their appreciation of the content.
• Comments – These are worded replies that demonstrate even greater engagement than reactions as users have to take time to express themselves. The more comments a post elicits, the greater engagement is indicated and the more visibility it will be given on the platform.
• Shares and Retweets – This engagement is when an online user opts to repost the content on their own feed so their followers also get to view the content.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) – This applies to ad content when online users choose to click through it to learn more. It indicates stronger engagement as the online user willingly goes further down the sales funnel.

Different platforms will provide different combinations of engagement metrics in their reports. You can then use these reports to analyze the performance of your social campaigns and work to better refine and optimize future content.

On the other hand, it’s also important to know that improved social media marketing engagement may be hard to achieve if your social media accounts aren’t verified. With the increasing cases of cyberattacks online, social media channels have provided a verification process to ensure the identity of individuals and brands. This means that you may not be viewed as credible in the industry you’re operating if your brand isn’t verified, which may affect your engagement metrics.

To avoid this problem, get verified on social media platforms by following some tips from reliable resource websites. Remember, when your brand is verified on social media, you’ll stand out from the competition, allowing you to enhance your engagement metrics with your target audience using some approaches.

So what approaches can you use to boost these metrics and therefore the performance of your campaigns? Here are some top tips that have worked for other organizations.

1. Know Your Audience

Before you run a campaign, it makes sense to understand just what audience you are targeting. This will make it easier to formulate content that will appeal to them. Different people will have different responses to the same content. You need to develop content that will have the broadest appeal to your target audience.

After a spate of injuries reported involving children climbing on dressers, IKEA developed the Safer Homes campaign focused on educating parents on furniture safety. This even went on to spawn an app and website that complement multiple content posts on different platforms including YouTube and Facebook.

The content developed was brief yet educational, providing busy parents with helpful information they could easily understand and act on. They were made aware of potential dangers in an easy format and with illustrations of how they could easily secure their furniture to avoid possibly devastating accidents at home.

Indeed, it’s important to know your social media audience to improve your engagement metrics. You can find your target audience and get to know them better by considering the following:

• Creating buyer personas by looking at the demographic details and knowing where they’re most active
• Checking your competitors by looking at the people who are engaging with them on social media

With these, you can get familiar with your target audience, which is crucial in creating effective social media marketing campaigns and boosting customer engagement.

2. Keep It Topical

A great way to encourage more engagement with online users is to focus your content on topical issues of the day. Subjects that are right now at the forefront of most people’s minds and will encourage them to want to delve deeper. From likes to shares, people will naturally be more interested in subjects that are trending as it allows them to add their voice to the conversation.

Covid has been a big part of online conversations these past 2 years and with new variants emerging, it remains a hot-button issue. Various brands have made Covid-related subject matter a part of their marketing campaigns to help encourage people through the pandemic and ensure they know that their businesses are still able to cater to them.

Bumble is a dating platform that has encouraged continued interactions between partners through their “Get Close, From Afar” campaign that takes social distancing recommendations to heart. The platform has been facilitating and promoting the idea of virtual interactions to keep the spark alive and in anticipation of eventually getting to meet up in person.

Bumble – Get close, from afar from Exell Film on Vimeo.

These kinds of campaigns tap into the topical subject of the pandemic that is far from over and is very much a part of everyday life for people.

Thus, to create topical content, it’s essential to stay on top of all industry publications and provide a detailed analysis of the topical situation through your views and thoughts on the matter. Moreover, when creating topical content, ensure you offer a solution to the industry problem. All these things will not only make your social media content engaging but also credible in the eyes of your target audience.

3. Be Less Commercial

Audiences have long grown weary of highly commercial ads that feature paid models and professional photography. There is a stronger desire for content that is steeped in realism, with user-generated content has become a huge draw.

Many people have greater faith in their fellow consumers’ opinions of a product or service than what is displayed in a commercial advert. They are more likely to engage with the content, trust it, and convert as a result. User-generated video content can be especially informative and believable as it provides more insight than just a simple image or testimonial.

Airbnb encourages contributions of user-generated content from both hosts and guests so that those considering a destination get to enjoy a peek behind the curtain of what awaits them. Their Instagram page is full of posts that feature images and commentary on different types of accommodations from various destinations.

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A post shared by Airbnb (@airbnb)

Not only has this approach aided Airbnb in being able to source ample marketing material at virtually no cost, but it also encourages more engagement that promotes the brand’s visibility and encourages greater bookings for featured destinations.

4. Respond Fast

This is particularly important where the social media platform permits comments from users. Much of the time you may not need to give a reply, but in some situations, it is good for the brand image to respond courteously and informatively, but also quickly.

Timely responses can spur an interesting conversation that may go viral, or just make other commenters feel encouraged to also engage further, helping to boost metrics. This is especially true of negative comments. The best brands know that by addressing negative commentary quickly, warmly and helpfully they can alter people’s impressions more favorably.

The airline industry is tough with problems like delays and cancellations being a commonplace occurrence. It takes hard work to manage people’s expectations and even harder effort to soothe them when you disappoint them.

JetBlue has one of the quickest response times to social media comments of any business, averaging about 13 minutes on Twitter. They understand that quick and clear communication is expected and make an effort to ensure they deliver this, even when the news is not good. They remain gracious even in the face of provoking comments, knowing that travel can be a stressful experience.

Their exemplary customer support and quick responses have helped build them an enviable following on social media. It has also encouraged those with positive experiences to more frequently share about them, helping to build a positive image of the brand as engagement grows.

5. Tap Into Emotions

People are not typically interested in reading or watching content that blatantly plugs products. This can make it difficult for brands whose goal is to boost conversion and sales. It can however help to take a more circuitous route by tapping into online users’ emotions. Eliciting an emotional response can help make them more interested in the content.

Pampers is a product that is known the world over for catering to the sanitary needs of babies and toddlers. The products actual uses are not however a subject that would be pleasing to anyone, not even the parents who have to clean up the messes. This is why they do not focus their campaigns on diaper changes, but rather on the fun and emotional aspects of being a parent.

The bond between parent and child is a common theme in their social media content. By tugging at the heartstrings of online users, they make their brand more memorable and likely to be chosen when shopping because of how their marketing makes people feel good. So they manage to promote engagement and conversions, without directly making it about the diapers they sell.

When you understand social media marketing engagement metrics, you can not only measure engagement across your social media profiles — you can improve them. Not all content resonates, but these 5 examples and tips will help you understand how to create content that does.