What Is Social Media Engagement and Why Is It Important?

Crafting a strong online business or brand presence means mastering audience engagement: here’s how to get started

In the digital age, your social media content can help customers to see, understand, and connect with your brand. In order to come up with great content strategies, you must learn to put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What are they looking for in your brand? What will make them want to talk to you, share your posts, and become ambassadors?

It’s time to learn what exactly engagement is, the most common types, how to increase your brand's engagement, and the tips and pitfalls to watch out for.

Marketing Executive, David Cuen (@davidcuen), has learned how to read the minds of audiences and apply his knowledge of marketing and strategy to connect them with brands. His expertise has seen him work for BBC, Instagram, and Booking.com, and in his course on social media strategy he shares how to build a strong community around your products and services, where customers can actually feed into your posts and generate content for you.

Here, he shares his thoughts on engagement…

What is engagement in the social media space?

David tells us that, at its core, engagement means: “connecting your audience to your content at a meaningful level so they cannot wait to interact with it”. This means creating a desire in your followers to become a part of your community, and your conversation.

If we consider a traditional marketing funnel, engagement happens between the steps of interest, consideration, and intent. That means if you can get a customer engaging, the next step is for them to become leads and paying customers.

The reason it’s discussed so much in contemporary conversations about social media, is that the internet has shifted. David explains that we’ve moved from a social graph (where people want to connect with specific people like friends and family) to an interest graph (where people want to connect with both friends and strangers that share likes, hobbies, and ideas). Generally speaking, content has won over information, while global has won over local.

The common types of social engagement

When you start looking for engagement in your social media community, you’ll examine a range of actions depending on which platform you use. Here are the six most common actions—David recommends choosing around three to focus on in your social media strategy.

1. Likes and Reactions: Emoji-based icons that users can click to show an emotion.

2. Shares: Popular on Facebook, and on Twitter in the form of Retweets.

3. Remixes: Popular on TikTok. Users respond to each other’s videos by stitching their own videos to them, for example as a ‘duet’ singing a song.

4. Comments: Text responses, present on most platforms.

5. Saves: Bookmarks or a favorites folder in the user’s account, so they can revisit content later.

6. Follows: Present on all platforms, this quick action is a strong form of social proof.

Why do people engage?

“We are social animals,” David points out, and so we enjoy reflection and discussion, to talk about our thoughts and feelings with others. Here are four reasons that your followers may want to engage with your social media profiles.

Recognition: they want to feel valued.

Expertise: they want to learn from you.

Social currency: they want to be associated with your brand.

Affinity: you share values with your followers.

So, now you understand the "what" and "why" explanations of social media engagement, how can you begin to encourage it on your own channels?

How do you encourage engagement?

David uses the “Jobs to be done” theory to explain how to figure out your customer needs. Think of each customer as a busy person looking to "hire" a business like yours to do a job. What would people hire your social media channels to do? You could break this question down into three parts:

1. What’s the functional aspect?

2. What’s the emotional appeal?

3. What’s the social aspect?

When you answer these three questions, you can form a statement that represents what your audience wants. The statement will look like this: "When I… I want to… So/and I can…"

David also gives the example of a monthly book curation service: “When I learn about the latest books, I want to feel proud to be a book-lover, so I can share my reading list with all my friends”.

This will give you an indication of what engagement you should seek from your followers. What questions should you ask? What incentives do you offer when customers share your service via a share action?

Common pitfalls, and what engagement is NOT!

Finally, David shares a few reminders and potential pitfalls to avoid…

1. It’s not about virality. A viral post will get engagement, but not high value and converting customers.

2. It’s not about ending every post caption with a question. Combine questions with informational posts that add value, or stories that promote other kinds of reactions.

3. Don’t start conversations and then leave your users alone! Keep answering their comments.

4. Don’t only allow for agreement. Respect your customer’s feedback and experiences, and offer good customer service as you would in real life.

If you're ready to take your engagement to the next level, check out David Cuen’s course, Social Media Strategy: Connect with Your Followers.

For more courses to help grow your business online and offline, why not explore our marketing and business courses?

You may also like:

- 10 Online Social Media Courses for Creative Freelancers
- What is a Digital Strategy and How Do You Create One?
- 6 Digital Marketing Trends for 2022
- Introduction to Community Management, course by Ana Marin
- Content Creation: Sustainable Social Media Strategies, course by Tiago Enriques