How To Increase Social Media Engagement on Any Platform

Want to learn how to increase social media engagement? This could be the secret to getting the audience you’ve always wanted online. The more interactions you have, the easier it’ll be to find even more people who enjoy your content. Read on to discover exactly how to build up a strong online presence on any social network.

A phone screen showing several social media apps, including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook.

What Is Social Media Engagement?

Engagement on social media is all about how much people interact with your account’s content. This is important across virtually any platform, including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook. It even extends to how your network interacts with you. Every app and site has specific social media engagement strategies you should follow.

If you make content that appeals to your main audience, this will help every post’s metrics. You’ll then find that more people are discovering your account, including users that fit your niche. This is why you need to increase social media engagement. Otherwise, you might find it tricky to link up with your target demographics.

The main types of engagement include likes, comments, shares, and even direct messages. It’s essential that your online plan accounts for every interaction you might have. Many social media platforms use algorithms to decide who sees your content and when. For the most part, the app will use your initial engagement levels to figure this out.

A phone showing the Instagram sign-in screen.

How To Increase Social Media Engagement on Instagram

While every platform is different, there are still some common threads that apply to any app. For now, we’ll look at the secrets of Instagram engagement. Here are the rules you should follow if you’re hoping to grow your IG account:

  • Make unique content: The photos and videos you share will have to be user-generated content. You can’t rely on reposting someone else’s work if you want to convince people to engage with you.
  • Talk to your audience: You’ll sometimes have to kick off the engagement yourself. This can involve replying to comments, asking questions in your posts, or simply encouraging people to share their own insights.
  • Use different formats: Stories, lives, and reels can promote your posts and find entirely new demographics. Experiment with many types of content and you’re sure to see more love across your whole account.
  • Collab with other users: If you’re building a brand, you can pay influencers to promote your products. This allows you to find a built-in audience that keeps up with your sector’s latest, greatest trends.
  • Keep captions short: There are plenty of times when a long caption is helpful and even necessary. However, 30 words or so seems to be the best option for making sure people actually read them.
  • Consider carousel posts: SocialInsider’s research has found that carousel posts offer a higher engagement benchmark than one-photo posts. This format is a “gallery” of photos (and even videos) in just one post.
  • Share content at the right time: Time your content just right so it shows up on peoples’ feeds while scrolling. This depends on your target audience, though evenings are often a good choice.
A phone next to graphics representing likes, comments, and follows.

The Main Social Media Engagement Examples

Engagement takes many forms — and many apps have their own terms for these. It’s important that you know these varied interactions and how they could help you. Here are the biggest types of engagement you should be aware of.

1. Likes

When someone likes your post, the app you’re using knows it’s worth looking at. This prompts it to recommend your content to more people. It also helps you guide your social media strategies over time. If one post gets many likes, this can inform your future content.

2. Comments

The “social” side of social media involves keeping in touch with your network. You can do this by asking them to comment and responding to them. This shows the app that you’re creating fresh discussions. Building these relationships will encourage people to keep up with your account.

3. Shares

If somebody shares your post, it’ll reach a much wider audience. Just one share from a popular user could double your interactions. On X, this is a repost (formerly a retweet). On Tumblr, you’d call it a reblog. However, most apps simply call this the “share” feature.

4. Follows

Successful posts can lead to more follows. This acts as social proof of your popularity to the app and even the users themselves. On YouTube, this is instead a subscription. When people follow you (or subscribe to your channel), your posts will show up directly on their feeds.

How To Increase Social Media Engagement Organically

If you want organic growth, you have to show your true self. Even if you’re running a brand, you can benefit from showing some of your personality. Your social media presence is about making new connections. You can only do this if people like you as a creator.

Reply to comments or mentions wherever you can. We can’t say this enough: it’s a great way to break out of your usual formats. Many brands are adopting an ironic style of posting to appeal to Gen Z users. This can even help you reach an entirely new demographic!

Building your online presence across different social media channels is also helpful. Instead of trying to be a jack of all trades, you can tailor your content to each app. For example, short-form content is popular on any platform. However, it might find the most success on TikTok.

If you manage to show who you really are, people are more likely to keep up with you. This may give you a chance to build a brand around yourself. You can even become an influencer in your niche with as few as 1,000 followers on most platforms.

Instagram’s Insights page showing long-term account interactions.

What Are Engagement Rates on Social Media?

One of the best social media engagement tips is to keep up with your interaction rates. This will show how much traction individual posts get among your followers. If these people aren’t liking your content, you might need to change up your strategy. Alternatively, this can be a sign of bot accounts lurking in the background of your profile.

There are a number of formulas you can use to calculate engagement rates. The end result will usually be the percentage of your followers who interact with a specific post. Anywhere between 1-5% is a good result on most platforms. However, as your account grows, you’ll most likely see these rates go down quite dramatically.

Two people taking part in an online challenge while a third person records them on a phone.

The Need for Adaptable Social Media Engagement Strategies

While a long-term plan is important for social media success, you can’t always predict your own account’s direction. This is because you’ll need to adapt to new trends across your platform and niche. Keeping up with these changes will show you how to increase social media engagement organically.

Many apps have a section (typically called “Trending” or “Explore”) that highlights popular posts in your circles. These are always worth looking at if you need any new content ideas. In fact, you should check trending social media posts on your platform of choice every day if possible.

High-engagement challenges are great for getting more likes and views, even if they may not fit your content calendar. Respond to these trends quickly (while putting your own spin on them) to reap their benefits. Even just a day or two later, the waves of engagement might be gone.

Following the latest social media engagement tips helps you stay ahead of other profiles in your network. You should always be considering how to change up your content. While this might just mean embracing a new format, it may even lead to you changing your account’s overall style.

A person recording themselves on their smartphone.

Social Media Engagement Tips To Boost Your Brand

Businesses can especially struggle to get engagement online. People might dismiss their posts as just another marketing campaign, for example. Here’s how to increase engagement on social media with a company account:

  • Find a good niche: No company starts out trying to appeal to all potential buyers. From the very beginning, you’ll need a clear idea of exactly who you want to buy your products.
  • Add visuals: Even if you’re not just using Instagram, visual content is more interesting than basic text posts. Taking this further, video product demonstrations might be better than photos.
  • Poll your followers: Some apps, such as Instagram, have built-in polls. Alternatively, you can simply ask your followers or buyers what they would like to see from your account’s content.
  • Share content regularly: The specifics of each platform’s algorithm are hard to figure out. However, social media sites and apps typically promote content from accounts that post more often.
  • Go live: Businesses should definitely add live streams to their social media engagement strategy. By running this at the right time, you could connect with your growing audience and answer their questions.
  • Promote it everywhere: Add your social media to your company website and even your automatic emails. This will help you find new followers who are already interested in your business.
  • Share reviews: While you should focus on your own content, you can always share your customers’ product reviews. This can interest your followers and even turn some of them into customers.
  • Track your performance: All your efforts will be for nothing if you aren’t keeping an eye on your metrics. Tracking the main social media engagement examples will show which content performs best.
A row of four white robots, each using a laptop.

How Bots Kill Your Online Engagement

Some people turn to bots in order to get more followers online. Alternatively, they may just have these fake profiles on their account without even knowing. In either case, these won’t help your brand. But what is social media engagement’s problem with bot profiles? The main issue is that they drag down your engagement rate by never interacting.

While getting new followers can help your engagement, you can only keep these metrics if they interact with your posts. Bot profiles rarely do this — and when they do, they only leave generic and obviously fake comments. This might even drive real followers away. For this reason alone, always get rid of bot followers as soon as you can.

However, it’s possible to buy real followers who actually engage with your posts. This helps your account ride the engagement boost and find its target audience far more quickly. These profiles will always give better results than bots ever could. In fact, if any social media app thinks you’re using bot followers, they’ll likely shut down your account.

Learning how to increase social media engagement also means figuring out what not to do. This includes buying bot accounts for a quick boost. At GoRead.io, you’ll only get real followers who help your Instagram grow organically.

Once you try out our services, you’ll see your follower and engagement metrics go up in next to no time. GoRead.io has everything you’ll need to make the most of your Instagram engagement strategies.