4 Ways to Increase Your Engagement on Social Media

Recently, I wrote a piece on how to grow your social media. I won’t give anything away. The link is in my profile if you want to read it.

But one takeaway is, to increase your engagement on social media, you have to engage.

The article goes into much more detail on how to, and more importantly, how not to do that. But if you want your numbers to go up, give people a reason to follow you, or at the very least, click on one of your posts. If you can get them to stop scrolling and just do that, you are halfway to gaining a new follower. And you never know which post or which follower will give you that sudden boost. I have used some of these techniques and picked up a few followers.

At other times, I have come back after a few hours and see I have gained dozens, sometimes hundreds of followers. And the techniques are pretty simple. Before you try them, however, I would urge you to read the other article. Grabbing new fans doesn’t gain you much if you can’t keep them. But here are four painless ways to get people to engage with you, and if you follow the advice in both articles, increase your following.

Ask what they think

Everybody on social media likes to think they are an expert on something. Or at least knowledgeable. When you come across a post from an expert, ask them what they think about something in their specialty. Provide a specific example of a problem and ask how they would solve it.

This almost guarantees a response. And all of their followers will see it and maybe some of them will get involved. Be sure and reply to, like, and share/retweet any answers you get. If any of the people responding to you have a large following, especially in your niche, be sure and follow them. I can promise you will pick up some numbers from this technique.

Ask everyone what they think

This one isn’t as specific and may or may not get the same engagement, but it’s definitely worth trying now and then. It’s sort of like trolling, not in the internet sense, but in the fishing sense. You’re throwing some bait out and seeing who bites. But it’s an excellent way to pick up new followers.

The trick here is to make sure people see it. You will need to pick a trending topic or find some hashtags with high engagement to draw people in. It doesn’t have to be a hot topic. Think of a question that makes sense for you to be asking, then research hashtags until you find one with a high number. This technique will take a bit more time, but if you land the right fish, it will be worth it.

Engage with Influencers

This is one I didn’t think of for a long time and only stumbled across it then. Like most people, I follow big names in my niches and other ‘celebrities’ that I am interested in. Sometimes, I like to see what they have to see or what they are up to.

Sometimes not

But, my feeling was, there was no sense in responding to them or asking them a question. They have hundreds of thousands of followers and probably don’t even read or reply to their own social media. Well, one guy we know does, but he’s an exception. Then, one day, I read a Tweet by a famous person in one of my primary interests, photography. I don’t recall who it was, but I complimented them on the post and followed that with a comment that showed I understood what he was talking about.

As expected, he didn’t respond. But a lot of his followers did. Many just liked or retweeted, but the post gained momentum and was my highest engaging post of that month. I also picked up a few dozen followers. Unlike the trolling technique above, this is more of a shotgun approach. It only takes a few minutes a day, and you will miss more often than not. But when you hit, you can hit big.

Help People

This one should be obvious, but in reading comments on posts in social media, it’s apparently not. If someone is asking for help about a subject that you know something about, help them. Don’t sell them anything, or link back to your site, just help them. The one exception to this is, if I have an article that precisely answers their question, I will link to it. I will give most of the answers in my reply but leave out just enough to entice them to follow up.

Too many times on social media, I see someone asking for help and they get inundated with unhelpful replies. It’s a dumb question. Google it. This is the wrong place to ask that. You’re trying to do the wrong thing, do this instead. Think about how grateful that person will be just to get a simple answer. Not only that, but you have shown everyone that follows that person or thread, that you have some knowledge in the area. More followers.

I floundered with increasing my stats on social media for years. But once I realized how easy it is to engage with people and attract new followers, it became easy. You don’t have to do all these things all the time. Once a week or so, I will devote an hour to one social media platform and follow these techniques along with the ones outlined in the other article. Yesterday, I picked up 75 new followers on Twitter.

How many did you get?