Find out what is actually affecting your social media engagement
Are you experiencing inconsistent or decreasing levels of online engagement? Social media engagement is fickle and dependent on many variables. We have collated the three top causes of poor engagement and how we fix them.
TikTok Brain
TikTok brain is the buzzword in business at the moment and refers to consumers low attention spans. Even though TikTok is the centre of this trend, it applies to all content platforms.
The constant availability of content that is short, light and informative or entertaining has adapted our minds to prefer snappy and concise content. Essentially, if content is too long its boring. This does vary depending on the platform and the target demographic but is generally a good rule of thumb.
When you’re creating content, consider yourself the consumer. If you’re bored, they will be too. A word of warning, as much as you want the content to be engaging and quick, don’t sacrifice your messaging. Play around with your content to see how your followers interact with it, but at the end of the day, they have followed you because they like your service or product and you need to reflect this.
Reminder: Meta is a business; its goal is to make money.
Meta’s (Instagram and Facebook) constant changes to their algorithm cause anxiety for businesses and marketing teams, as it’s continue to affect organic reach.
For example, the Instagram algorithm tracks the performance of your post in the first 30 minutes and then distributes it in order of priority to your followers. This does have the potential to show the content to 50% of your followers. Instagram tracks your immediate engagement such as likes, shares, comments, direct messages and hovering time. Instagram also hates low-quality content, if your content doesn’t get a good level of engagement when it’s first posted the platform will limit how many people will see it.
If you want your content to perform well, you need to consider all these metrics. Social media analytics are your best friend. This is your reference point for all pieces of content and how you identify peak times, favoured content mediums and types, multi-use and nature. The algorithm also favours momentum, so if you are consistently posting content that is popular and appeals to a wide range of followers and people your content will be promoted.
Be consistent or leave
As mentioned above, Instagram favours momentum and consistent use of its platform, this is the case across all social media platforms. Social media platforms don’t want you to just produce content; they want you to engage with it and with other users. This means responding to comments and direct messages, interacting with posts you have been tagged in and liking and commenting on other users’ content.
The best way to achieve this is by scheduling and planning. This allows you to maintain consistent momentum without saturating your followers’ feeds resulting in ‘UNFOLLOW’. Social media content is divided into two pillars; reactive and proactive. Proactive content can be planned in detail up to a month in advance. Reactive content is when you adopt trending content and is distributed quickly and hence cannot be planned in advance. If you are relying on social media platforms to advertise your product, consistent management is required.
