Social Media Engagement: How To Get Better Organic Reach
Do you ever wish you knew how to hack the algorithm? Ever wonder how to go viral and get more followers on your social media platforms?
We all know engagement is a good thing. Across platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, we all know that likes, shares, comments and saves help to expand our reach and build our audiences.
You may have noticed that you're getting less engagement recently than in the past, and fewer people are taking the time to comment or engage with your posts. (And if you think about it, how often do you comment on a post? Probably not very often, unless you’re doing it for your business.
So how do you get better organic reach on social media?
The Truth is there’s no real “hack” for engagement. At least, not for valuable engagement.
But wait— there’s unvaluable engagement? What is that? (And yes, we mean unvaluable, not invaluable)
Let me explain.
1. Your posts need to be relevant
From time to time we've been guilty of posting for engagement’s sake. We know that engagement helps, so we try to force it with posts like: what’s your favourite ice cream flavour? This or that? Left or right? Coffee or tea? Chocolate or candy? Let's hear it for Friyay!
Many of us have tried these kinds of tactics to drive social media engagement.
The problem with this is that it’s usually not relevant to your business or genuine to who you are or why you have that particular social media account. We never recommend posting merely for the sake of driving engagement.
But (you might ask) don’t relevant questions drive positive engagement? Well, they can.
2. Provide Value (relevant value)
Say you’re a coffee shop, and you make a post asking, “What should our scone flavour be for tomorrow: blueberry or cranberry?”
It’s related to your business. It feels like information you actually need for making a choice. You might get a handful of comments. But what value are you providing to your customers? Is there anything about this post that is going to make people want to come back to you again? Will they seek out your posts?
We talk a lot about doing three things on social media: Connect, Inform or Sell.
When you think about a post that sells, you're probably thinking, “here is our product, buy now.”
What you might not realize is that selling can also be in the form of: “Comment below.”
How is this Selling?
Think of it like this:
You are asking your audience to spend something. Not their money in this case, but their time and their opinion. If you are requiring them to invest in your business, even just in your post, you need to complete the transaction. You need to give relevant value in return.
Here is an example of providing value that is irrelevant:
Imagine if we, Cat’s Cove Communications, did a giveaway for a gift card to a coffee shop.
We could say “Win this gift card! Like, Follow, Comment!” Chances are we will get a lot of comments, and a lot of follows. But are these followers going to be business owners looking to improve their online presence or are they going to be coffee-lovers who couldn’t care less about digital marketing and search engine optimization?
This would be a case of posting for the sake of driving engagement. We'd increase our followers, however, we would not have gained followers that we can really connect with in the future to build our business.
And ultimately this means that we are likely to get even less engagement in the future, because a large percentage of our followers don’t need what we actually offer. It doesn’t increase social media reach, at least not in a way that is going to help.
So how do you get greater reach? How can you drive engagement on social media?
Most of us are passive social media users. Most of us don’t participate, we scroll.
This makes it difficult for business owners to find out people are thinking and what questions people might have that are related to their business.
In fact, one study suggests 8/10 people will read a headline and not do anything else with it, not even click to read the article.
Beyond news articles and blog posts, this suggests that 8/10 people in your audience are only passively consuming what you are posting. They may “Like” the post, but that is likely the extent of their engagement. They may not read your captions (if you are here reading, thank you, you are a rare find!).
This is how we consume most social media these days.
If you think about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, these are now described as scrolling platforms.
How do you use social media?
What is your own behaviour on these platforms? Are you a passive scroller, too? If you are, you’re part of the majority.
Even with Instagram and Facebook Stories, you might leave a heart or a quick reaction, but mostly you are probably skipping through, just to accomplish watching them, like a task you need to rush through to clear the cache.
This begs the question: Is anyone engaging anymore?
The best way to increase organic reach
You might not like the answer, but the easiest way to increase your reach organically and to drive engagement is through video.
Videos like Reels get pushed beyond your current follower list. They get you more exposure and, with any luck, more reach to relevant accounts who will benefit from the value you're providing.
Video is consuming. Even if it doesn’t create engagement, it is more engaging. People pay attention to short videos.
So if engagement is what you’re after, here is our number one suggestion:
TikTok.
Why TikTok? Let’s take a look at the stats:
The engagement rate on Instagram is a little over 3%. Facebook is lower than that. This is the average percentage of follower engagement each post garners.
TikTok, on the other hand, commands around an 18% engagement rate. A higher engagement rate means you’re more likely to receive questions and valuable feedback.
Questions and valuable feedback means that you can create more content across all your social media platforms from those comments. And the cycle continues with more valuable and relevant content.
But what's the number one thing you need with all these platforms?
PATIENCE.
Patience is your number one tool. If you want more followers, be patient and gather followers through relevant, valuable and meaningful content.
For engagement, be patient and don’t take the easy road that lacks value. When it comes to creating videos, be patient with yourself and the results. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Comments