Running social media for a small business can be intimidating, and when you have hardly any engagement, it can feel like a waste of time. Why post every week or even every day if no one is listening?

Before we dive into how to increase social media engagement, it’s important to remember why social media is important. Like we talked about in our post, “Why Your Company Should Be On Social Media,” an active social media presence can boost search engine rankings, increase sales and give your amazing insights as to what your audience is actually interested in.

Sound worthwhile? Let’s talk about increasing the engagement levels, then!

1. Be engaging

If you want to increase social media engagement, you need to be engaging. Don’t just post the same old content, hoping that you’ll finally go viral. That’s not the goal. The goal is to form a relationship with your audience and to be someone worth listening to. Here are a few ways to make your content more engaging:

• Post helpful content. If you want customers to listen, give them the information they’re looking for. Share tips from your field of expertise. This will only help to grow your audience and establish your expertise.
• Use a mix of captivating visuals. Posting the same image type is sure to lead to a lack of interest. Instead, mix up your visuals, rotating between high-quality images, quotes, or images with text content, videos, and more.
• Ask questions. Social media isn’t a post-and-forget-it platform. Rather, you should stick around and start conversations by asking questions. You may get no interaction at first, but you’ll never get interactions if you stop asking questions. Over time, as you post interesting content and continue to ask questions, you’ll get some responses. Moreover, you can customize your questions based on the more successful types. (For example, don’t ask yes and no questions. Focus on questions that people will have a strong opinion on or that they’ll resonate with. Even asking chocolate cake versus vanilla is an engaging question!)

2. Engage with others

What better way to increase engagement than to engage with others actively? This is when an active social media account (leaving your profile to start conversations elsewhere) will often surpass a passive account (waiting for people to find your profile). Here are some ways to get started!