Social Media: It’s About Engagement, Not The Number Of Followers

Likes, followers, comments: which of these are most important when it comes to social media?

Truthfully, it’s not about getting the most of any of these. In social media, like in many other things in digital marketing, what matters most is quality. And the best quality measure in the social media world is engagement.

What is Social Media Engagement?

Social media engagement includes all of the ways in which people interact with brands: from likes to comments to shares on the brand’s posts. Ideally, you want your followers to regularly respond to your social media posts, whether they ‘like’ them, leave a comment, or share them with their own audience. Doing so not only indicates that what you are sharing is of good quality, but also feeds into the social media algorithms that decide which posts show up in a person’s feed. For example, Facebook and Instagram feeds are not shown in order of time: these platforms give priority to posts people are likely to engage with, such as posts from accounts they often interact with (or posts that are sponsored, i.e. paid to be shown to more people). It’s actually pretty clever if you think about it, because you end up seeing more of the content you’ve shown interest in.

You can see how important this is for businesses and brands who want their social media posts to reach a wider audience. If your followers are not engaging with your social media content, they likely aren’t seeing your content show up in their feeds. And if they’re not seeing your posts, they’re going to continue to not engage. It becomes a vicious circle.

How do you get out of the engagement rut? By slowly growing your following so that it’s made up of people who followed your account because they enjoy your content. You then need to focus on continually sharing useful content that’s worth engaging with. Engagement comes from trust and knowledge, both of which take time to build with your audience.

A large following doesn’t guarantee engagement: this post drew one reaction.

How Engaged Are Your Followers?

Here’s the thing: it’s not about how many followers you have. You can have thousands of people “like” your Facebook page or follow your Instagram account, with hardly any of them engaging with your posts. Sometimes when this is the case, a brand or business has “bought” followers just to inflate its audience numbers. Because these purchased followers have not naturally chosen to follow the account, they rarely engage with it. So while the account may look popular, its posts aren’t inspiring its audience to interact.

Instead, it’s better to look at engagement relative to audience size. How many likes, comments, and shares are you bringing in compared to the number of followers and fans of your social media account? Small accounts with more interaction have a much higher engagement rate than larger accounts with less interaction. High engagement shows positive things about your brand: that you’re posting useful content, you’re trustworthy, helpful, entertaining, and above all, that you are connecting with your audience. What does a high number of followers show? That a lot of people clicked the ‘like’ or ‘follow’ button. It’s not necessarily an indicator of quality and worth.

If you’re fairly new to social media, focus on sharing quality content that inspires engagement rather than on rapidly growing your following. Your audience will grow over time as you establish your expertise and authenticity. If you don’t have the time to consistently post great content, consider having a social media management team run your accounts, or a content creation team write posts that inspire engagement.

Learn more about the social media services by Rock Solid Marketing, a digital marketing agency based in Mildura.